


breathing through corrupted lungs

by alekszova



Series: a quiet hum of winter melodies [1]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Homophobia, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Past Sexual Abuse, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:13:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26389222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alekszova/pseuds/alekszova
Summary: After his break up with his girlfriend, Connor is terrified to come home to his family during Christmas without someone to use as a buffer between him and his manipulative and conservative family. It's easy to convince Gavin to come with him, but it isn't going to be easy to get through the days that follow.forconvin september challenge!
Relationships: Connor/Gavin Reed
Series: a quiet hum of winter melodies [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2075568
Comments: 22
Kudos: 128





	1. voices in my head

Connor has been ripped apart since he was born. His father pulling him in one direction, his mother pulling him in the other. It didn’t matter when he was taken away from them. Their rules are still instilled in his head. He remembers everything. Thirty-three years into his life and he still hears their voices when he does anything, aided by the voice of his aunt, backed by the voice of his grandpa. Everything and anything he does they are there, whispering quietly, telling him what to do.

He is a good dancer, but he was never good enough for them. Only landing background roles. Never the main star. And shouldn’t he be landing the main roles if he was so spectacular? If he was so incredibly at dancing, shouldn’t he be getting the recognition he deserves? Male ballet dancers are treated like princes, but by contrast of all the others, Connor was nothing more than filler for the stage to lift a girl assigned to the same disappointing placement.

_ — Of course, auntie, of course— _

_ So why aren’t you getting them? Why haven’t you gotten them? _

_ — Because I’m not good enough. _

_ Yet. You aren’t good enough  _ **_yet._ **

She would say  _ yet  _ like there was ever a possibility that Connor could do enough, and in his attempts to reach that elusive and imaginative  _ yet _ , he would do more. Practice more. A dozen times through the same routine, hearing the snap of her voice when he was too fast, too slow. When his arms were too frozen at his side, when his expression was too sad or too angry or too happy. Didn’t matter what. She always found something wrong with it.

So why is he here?

Why is he letting the voices infiltrate his head, doing the same routine he has done for ten years when he thinks about them?

He has a hundred of them in his head, stored there, waiting to haunt him when he is just trying to live through his life. Day to day work broken up by things that remind him of ballet or piano or singing.

Not like this is ever the end of it. He always convinces himself that dancing will finally get her out of his head for a little while, but it doesn’t really matter, because she is only ever replaced by someone else. Someone who tells him to play the piano until his fingers bleed, to sing until his voice breaks and he can’t even speak, to study until he can’t keep his eyes open and then find a way to study some more.

_ Because you aren’t good enough. _

_ Yet. _

_ Not yet. _

  
  


“Are you okay?”

Connor looks up, meeting Gavin’s gaze. He looks worried, which is startlingly sweet. Gavin never worries about anyone but himself. Certainly not poor little Connor and his injured feet.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re bleeding.”

He shakes his head, but he doesn’t elaborate. He needed to redo the bandages on his feet sooner than he thought. He always walks to work, even days after dancing, but this month is the month his shoes have finally worn out beyond repair and it has been too long since he danced for his feet to really be used to the damage that gets done to them. If he was home alone, he might allow himself to cry. Just one or two tears, then he’d wipe them away like his mother taught him and he’d move on.

But he watches Gavin’s face harden. No longer the softness of concern but the annoyance that the trust wasn’t reciprocated.

“What’d you do anyway? Go on a fucking hike to Disney Land?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Gavin echoes, expecting more from him. Always expecting more. “You should get yourself new shoes.”

“I will.”

Gavin shakes his head. He doesn’t believe him. Connor doesn’t either. He knows he’ll have the best intentions to replace the tattered sneakers he’s held onto for nearly seven years now, but he won’t. He has to save up his money. Every nickel and dime kept burrowed away like a squirrel preparing for winter. He has to get out of this town. There’s nothing for him here. Not even an excuse to miss the family dinner this weekend. He can’t lie again. Last time they called the shop and asked Hank why he was working on Christmas. Hank covered for him, but at what cost? Him knowing that Connor is a liar? That he’s a terrible son who couldn’t handle one more holiday?

He can’t stand going back there alone. Not after him and Kara broke up. She was the perfect girl in their eyes, which is all that really matters to them. The perfect girl with the perfect job. No wonder they couldn’t stay together.

“Hey, Con?”

“What?” he says, his voice cut with annoyance, though he’s relieved that something has pulled him from his thoughts. He doesn’t like dwelling on Kara for too long.

“We need a bunch of star embeds for the soaps next month. You could sit at the workbench and make them today, it’d save me a lot of time.”

_ Oh. _

“Of course,” Connor says quietly, pulling his shoes back on, pushing himself to his sore feet. “I’ll get right on it.”

  
  


Connor leans on one hand, watching Gavin roll the soap dough against the surface, cutting pieces off, sculpting features for the snowmen that will be in one of the eight winter soaps they’ll sell out of within the first two days of January. They’re behind. Behind enough that it might actually be logical to work over Christmas, but Hank likes being with his family too much. He says it’s important not to take them for granted.

So he won’t make them work Christmas, but Connor can hope and dream something will come up that will give him more than two days to pack his bags and head to his parent’s place. Alone.

His eyes move from Gavin’s hands to his face, watching the concentration in work as he delicately places a carrot onto the snowman’s face.

_ Alone. _

“What are you doing this weekend?” Connor asks.

“Getting drunk in my apartment.”

“Alone?”

“Alone.”

He smiles, leaning back against his chair, arms crossed, “What do I have to pay you to maybe not be alone?”

“A million bucks.”

“I don’t have that.”

Though, technically, he would if he gets married. His parents will give him his inheritance and he can run away.

“I know.”

“Gavin?” Connor says, turning back to the workbench, trying to find something to do with his hands while he speaks, but there’s nothing. Silicon molds waiting for the soap to fully cure. Glass jars already sorted and organized on the shelves above him. “I have a problem.”

“What kind of problem?”

“Familial.”

“Oh.  _ Oh.”  _ Gavin says, moving back. “Absolutely not.”

“What? I didn’t say anything—”

“You think I haven’t seen enough shitty romance movies with my sister to know where you’re going with this?”

“You have a sister?”

“Shut the fuck up. Not the point,” Gavin says. “Absolutely not. I’m not going to fake being your boyfriend to impress your family.”

“I highly doubt you would impress anyone’s family, let alone mine.”

When Connor looks back to Gavin, he sees his gaze is narrowed, his lower lip out as if he’s pouting like a child, quietly demanding for Connor to take that back.

“I am not going with you. There’s nothing you could pay me to go with you. I fucking hate Christmas already and I got free of my family. I’m not drinking this weekend to drown my sorrows, I’m fucking celebrating.”

“Okay,” Connor says. “You can calm down now.”

He doesn’t. Connor can tell by the way he clenches his jaw and turns back to his work. Dozens of little snowmen getting their noses tonight. And Gavin is good at his job. He’s good at precise work. Connor never would’ve guessed, with how Gavin started out. Doing messy pours of five different colors, swirling them together. Always looking absolutely hideous until they cut them into bars and revealed his work. His piping on top of the soaps could use some practice, but his work with the soap clay has always been some of the best.

Connor is more on the technical end of things. Following recipes. Mixing together the lye water and finding the colors or fragrances for him and Hank. Not the creative side. It’s therapeutic, not needing to focus on the creative things. He has been drained from all creativity during his childhood. Nothing left but a shell of a human poured out at the end.

“Gavin—”

“Fine,” he says, stepping back, knocking the stool beside him down. “Fine. I’ll go with you. On one condition.”

“And what’s that?”

“You cut the soaps for a year and you clean the containers until like… the end of time. And no falling love. We aren't going to be clichè about this."

“Okay,” Connor says with a laugh. “I can do that."

  
  


Markus isn’t here today. He left a week ago, taking an extended vacation with his family. It’s a relief to be in the house alone. Carl gifted it to Markus after he graduated from college, and Markus was kind enough to allow Connor to live with him in it. Big enough that they could go days without seeing each other, but the nature of their friendship led to them spending more nights falling asleep on the couches in the living room than in separate bedrooms.

And maybe if things had been timed differently, maybe they never would’ve had separate bedrooms at all. But Markus was dating North in college when they met, and Connor was good at convincing himself of who he was, labels that had been assigned to him by society, though most importantly his parents and his family that never falsely professed their unconditional love for him. By the time Connor figured out who he was, he was with Kara, deeply in love with her, thinking of futures. House colors and carpets versus hardwood floors and baby names. Three years of their lives ticked by together.

Then suddenly nothing.

Connor’s hand trails along the edge of the piano, feeling more than a little hollow inside at the loss of someone he had for such little time. Three years isn’t all that much in the grand scheme of forever. Three years is more than he could ever hope for, too.

He needs to pack, but he sits down on the bench, fingers trailing across the keys slowly, only pressing a few on his way to the end and back again. No song in particular, but he feels words slip out of him anyway. Quiet, broken whispers of lyrics that he wrote one night in college. Something too steeped in sadness to be given away to anyone else. He remembers them perfectly, though he thinks they’re a little too dramatic. A little too serious. His parents weren’t the worst of the worst. His aunt and his grandpa were not demons.

And yet he still feels the sting against the back of his hand when he missed a note, the feeling of scalding hot tea pressed into his hands to soothe his throat.

He pulls away slowly, closing the lid over the keys, but he remains seated. Staring down at the shiny wood surface, trailing his finger along the grain of the wood, swirled around the knots.

_ How is he going to survive this? _

Like he always does.

Fake everything and anything.

That is one thing he is perfect at.

  
  


The trunk to the car slams closed, the suitcase and dufflebag residing side by side, looking just as off as Connor and Gavin do standing opposite of each other. For the trip, Connor has plucked out his best clothes. Ones with no holes or stains. Sneakers traded out for loafers he only wears when he visits his family, the boots packed in his bag still with tags hanging on the laces. He can’t be seen by his family dressed in the rags he’s used to. He has to be perfect, and that includes his clothes and his hair.

“Can’t believe you cut it,” Gavin says, reaching out and fixing the one part that always falls down. “Looks better when it’s a little long. You remember that time you went through a man-bun phase? You looked like my brother.”

“Thanks,” Connor says, grimacing a little at the comment. His fake-boyfriend comparing him to his sibling isn’t something that he really wants to hear. “Can you get in? It’s a long drive.”

“Yeah, and I’ve got a fucking bone to pick with you about that. You didn’t say it was going to be the weekend. You can’t just expect me to drop everything for, what is it, four days?”

“Three nights. Barely four days. By the time we get there we can go straight to bed. Today hardly counts. And we can leave early in the morning, so technically, two and a half."

“I was supposed to be at home drinking.”

“I know.”

“You owe me.”

“I know.”

He gets into the driver’s side, watching Gavin as he takes the passenger seat. Tattered gloves, worn jacket, ripped jeans. Even his beanie has a hole in it, his scarf is the only thing that seems to be intact completely. And it worries Connor. Kara was naturally good at keeping herself put together. Designer dresses and shoes, ignoring the cold climate for things that would appear on the cover of the magazine she worked at. But Gavin—

He is the exact opposite.

It’s not why Connor picked him to come with. He didn’t have a choice. It was a stupid, rushed decision that he is now regretting. When they arrive at the house, they are going to take one look at Gavin and tell him to leave.

“Hey, is there anything I should know about? Like your family? How long are we supposed to have been together?” Gavin asks.

Connor starts the car, looking up to the  _ Sumo’s Soap Shop  _ sign, letting the vanilla scent of the cheap air freshener hanging in his car wipe away the floral scents that the shop always exudes.

“Are you ready to take notes?”

“Yeah,” Gavin says, holding up an invisible notepad and pen. “I’ve got a decent memory, Con. It’s fine.”

“Okay,” he says, breathing in, letting it out slowly. “Then let’s start from the beginning.”

  
  


His parents aren’t famous, but they are rich, and they are well known in the little town that he grew up in. His mother was an opera singer that failed after stressing her voice to the point of being unable of hitting any high notes decently. His father owns a company that manufactures a famous brand of pianos, but the money mostly comes from his grandfather who sold illustrious hidden passage devices. Hand-crafted clocks that could open up, lead from one room to the next. Bookcases where pulling it would open up a wall. They were custom designs that would blend into every home. Everyone loved them, especially the rich. Even if there was nothing to hide, people loved to say that they had a secret passage in their home. Didn’t matter if it was no longer secret. It was just special.

“And you went into soap making?”

“My family really wanted me to become a famous singer. I didn’t have the range or the skill for opera, though, so they stopped pushing me for it. Wasn’t very good at piano, either.”

“But soap making? Especially a place like Sumo’s? We sell out fast but we barely broke a thousand customers this year.”

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “It’s nice. It’s different.”

Something he crafts that’s physical, that stays. Soap might eventually be used up to nothing but the remnants, but it’s different from dancing or singing. It’s still there after a few seconds. It stays.

“When I was thirteen I went to boarding school,” Connor says, starting up the lie that his parents still tell everyone.

A lie that they’ve crafted to protect the reputation of their family. Hard to tell anyone, even Kara or Markus, that his uncle came to visit and saw the bruises on his hands and took him away from his parents. A deal they struck to keep their names out of the papers. But his uncle died a year later and he was left to his aunt Amanda that could hardly stand him. She never wanted children. She certainly didn’t want him. Getting away from her when he graduated college was the best decision he made, and yet he still comes back every holiday they call him to.

Except this past year. Kara broke up with him shortly after Thanksgiving, which his family isn’t meant to celebrate, and he was able to excuse his absence with work during Christmas last year, but not this one. Not again. This is the longest it’s been since he’s seen any of them.

“Connor? About boarding school?”

“Hated it,” he whispers. “That’s all.”

And that part is true—

He hated every part of the private school he attended, he hated every second of living with his aunt. He hated the late nights studying and the early mornings dancing and he hated the evenings where he ran from extracurricular to extracurricular to broaden his resumé. He hated the smack of the cane against the back of his legs when he was caught showing any emotion other than absolute gratitude towards his family.

He doesn’t have to be here. He could turn the car around. Drive the other direction. He could drop Gavin off at his apartment and he could cut his parents off.

But they would find him.

He knows they wouldn’t stop until they could.

  
  


When they arrive at the house, he tries not to look too closely at how much bigger it looks than he remembers. What falsities it promises from the exterior. Markus’ house is big enough to get lost in, to never see Markus at all, but this one there is always someone lurking around the corner. A maid or a cook or one of his relatives, waiting to pounce and ask a hundred questions.

They’ve gotten here late enough that his mother and father have already retired for the night. His aunt greets them, a kiss against both cheeks as she comments on Connor’s appearance. A mix of compliments and slight digs.

_ Your hair has always been hard to tame, hasn’t it? _

—  _ Sure has, auntie. _

_ You should say hello to your grandfather. Introduce him to… _

_ — Gavin. _

_ Gavin. Introduce him to Gavin before you go to your room. _

Amanda barely looks at Gavin after the first glance over at him, though Connor expected as much. When he came out to his family, they all kept their mouths shut, false smiles plastered, and small nods. He supposes there was an unsaid contract he agreed to then to never bring a boy home. But they’re all built too much on niceties and manners to say anything now that Gavin is already here. It’s the same reason that he expects Amanda to send up some proper clothes for Gavin later, which Connor can’t decide whether that’s a blessing or a curse, either.

The two step into the parlor, the smell of cigar smoke greeting them before he spots his grandfather in the chair, setting his book off to the side. 

“Connor! It’s been so long.”

“I’m sorry, grandpa,” he says, leaving Gavin’s side quickly. Too quickly. “Work has been very busy.”

“Of course. I understand.”

He doesn’t. Connor sees that in his gaze, feels it in his tight grip on Connor’s hands when he takes them. The squeeze is not a gentle reassurance but a warning.

“And who is this?” he asks, looking behind Connor. “A friend?”

“Yes,” Connor says quietly, knowing that introducing Gavin as anything else right now might result in a broken finger. The likelihood is slim, since there’s a witness, but the fear is still there, clinging onto his insides. “He’s come to stay with us for the weekend. Is that alright?”

“Of course.”

_ Of course. _

Their family is built upon the phrase  _ of course.  _ But nothing is ever  _ of course  _ it is code for  _ I’m sorry  _ when it slips out of Connor’s mouth. It is code for  _ you’ve given me no choice  _ when it’s said to him, cut with the promise that he will find a way to repay them.

“It’s quite late,” Connor says, pulling free from his grandfather’s hands. “We worked over today, I’m sorry we couldn’t get here sooner.”

“It’s fine.”  _ It’s not.  _ “You get some rest. We’ll talk in the morning. Oh and, does your friend need one of the guest rooms? I can have one of the maids change the sheets, set it up for him?”

Connor looks back to meet Gavin’s gaze, who stares at him with concern. He hasn’t said a word since they arrived. Shocking to see him quiet for so long.

“I’m sorry, grandpa,” Connor whispers, he can feel the fear in his voice, making everything sticky and messy. “He’s not that kind of friend. We’re going to be sharing a room.”

“Oh?” he says. And the way he says it, it’s the way Connor has heard it a hundred times when he’s messed up before. At first glance, it sounds curious, friendly, but it isn’t. It’s angry. It’s vicious. “What about Kara?”

“We broke up.”

His grandpa’s eyes flash with the same kind of quiet anger, moving to Gavin’s face. Blame already being placed upon someone, especially someone that doesn’t look the way they’re supposed to. His clothes are worn, his features too rough and masculine. Too much of a boy.

“We should get some rest,” Connor says again. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

He takes Gavin’s hand to try and hide how much it is shaking, pulling Gavin through the foyer and up the stairs. They aren’t out of sight yet. He can see his aunt Amanda in the other room, peering up at them as they take the steps. It isn’t until he is inside of his room, closing the door behind him, that he finally lets go of Gavin’s hand and breathes.

“Connor?”

“Sorry,” he whispers. “Sorry. I wasn’t… It’s…”

“I get it.”

“Do you?” Connor asks, looking up to him.

“You think you’re the only one with parents that don’t accept you?” Gavin huffs out a laugh, sitting down on the edge of the bed.

He’s staring at the suitcases a maid has brought up and placed at the edge of the room. Shiny silver next to the beaten orange duffel bag. Different. Separate. Like the two of them. Connor missing his pea coat that he could hide under, feeling so exposed in this ridiculous outfit they’ve handed to him.

But it’s not like that. It’s not like what Gavin said. It isn’t as simple as his parents not accepting him, but he doesn’t say anything. It is too hard to explain. How much he blames himself for all this. Being stuck in a family that have all turned against him.

_ Why did he bring Gavin here? _

All this fear, all this terror—

Why is he sharing it with Gavin?

“I’ll sleep on the couch,” Connor says, turning away from the door. He doesn’t look at Gavin as he steps over to the sofa, too small for him, but he always sleeps curled up in the smallest ball possible. Curled up tight, trying to stay safe under a blanket. “We have to get up early tomorrow.”

“It’s your bed,” Gavin says.

“You’re the guest.”

“Yeah. I guess I am,” he replies. “I  _ guest  _ I am. _ ” _

Connor cracks a small smile. A polite response to Gavin’s poor joke. “You’re stupid.”

“But that’s why you love me, right?” he says. “Or have the two of us not gotten that far?”

“Whichever you prefer.”

“Connor?”

“What?”

“I know what it’s like,” he says quietly. “To be scared of people you’re supposed to trust.”

“We haven’t been here for ten minutes,” Connor replies. “You think you know my family?”

“I know fear and I know that this isn’t you. We’ve been here for two seconds and you’ve already completely shut down.”

Connor looks away from the couch, abandoning adjusting the cushions to be marginally comfortable. He hasn’t seen the look on Gavin’s face until now. The way his features have softened again. The vulnerability, the concern from a few days ago back again.

“It’s only for four days. Not even, technically.”

“Being scared…” he says quietly. “Doesn’t matter if it’s four seconds or four days or four years. It still counts.”

“I’m not scared.”

“Then why are you shaking?”

Connor clenches his hands into fists, trying his best to make it go away, but the trembling only seems to infect his insides, makes his stomach turn, his knees weak.

“I’m fine. Please. Can we just sleep?”

“Sure. No problem.”

  
  


He heads to the bathroom, closing the door behind him, turning the lock. His hands trail across the marble top of the counter, to the pearl handles of the sink, the silver of the faucet. Everything pure white, showing every mistake possible. Everything but the monogrammed blue towels hanging on the rack, his initials looking back at him with a question.

_ Don’t you belong here, Connor? _

No—

That’s not right.

That’s not the question.

The question isn’t  _ do you belong here? _

It’s  _ how could you ever think you could actually leave? _

Even if he runs a thousand miles away or the other side of the planet, these people will reside right here with him, dug under his skin, carved into the inside of his skull. Voices whispering at him, telling him to dance better, sing better, play better.

Be  _ better. _

The last ten years of his life have been proof of that. Proof that even with them gone, he will sit down at a piano and play until his hands ache and beg for a break. He will dance until his feet form blisters and bleed through his socks the next day. He will sing until his voice goes hoarse and he has to tell Hank and Gavin he’s sick, but not contagious. He will make excuses for the dark circles under his eyes, for the messiness of his hair. He will consume energy drinks and coffee and caffeine pills to make it through the day.

Because he is perfect at one thing and one thing alone:

Faking being okay.


	2. the price of perfection

He wakes frozen in the middle of the night. The cold air of the outside making its way in like it always does, turning his bedroom into a freezer. This house is big, renovated and sparkly new, but the bones are still old and his parents never put in the money to properly insulate it. Winters are frozen nights and summers are sweltering hot. Connor half expects to see snow on the floorboards by the window when he sits up. He used to leave it open all the time at night. In the summer it was when he was desperate for a breeze to break up the heat, in the fall he liked the cold wind before it turned frigid to last. And ever since, everywhere he goes, everywhere he lives, Connor would push open the window before he fell asleep. Breathe in the air of the outside.

Here, it is a mix of trees and nature. Freshly cut grass in the morning, the familiar creak of the tire hanging from the tree muffled amongst the wind, though that’s long since been taken down. When he went to live with his aunt Amanda, her place always felt like it was perpetually stuck in the week before Halloween. Everything holding its breath as it awaited the special day to finally arrive. The neighbor had a black cat that would always stretch out on the back porch in the mornings, eyes looking back at him in the dark at night. Her place smelled like pumpkins and cinnamon, though it was never anywhere to be found except in the candles sitting on fire mantels and end tables. His uncle, for the brief time he was alive, was the only one that showed the same excitement as he did for the holiday.

It is a curse, Connor thinks, that Markus’ house in the city smells like wet asphalt, rain, and freshly made pretzels. It doesn’t evoke that fleeting feeling of freedom in the mornings like these two places do. A contrast that always makes his chest feel tight and his breath caught in his lungs. When he had the ability to run, to do whatever he pleased with his day, he never did. And now, being back in this house, he is chained indoors with nowhere to go.

Not forever, though.

This morning, they are going to go hunting.

  
  


Connor doesn’t fall back asleep. He is stuck looking at the clock on his phone every thirty minutes when he can’t seem to get his eyes to shut for longer than a second. The minutes tick by closer and closer to when they wake in the morning. Him, at least. Gavin will be saved from this trip out into the woods. Connor didn’t even warn him. It felt useless to do so. Kara was never asked to go out into the woods, why should Gavin? Though, abandoning him in this house to fend for himself for a few hours seems cruel, too.

He sits up, using the light of his phone to find his clothes and slipping away into the bathroom to change twenty minutes before his alarm will go off to tell him. He just doesn’t want to be here. In this room. Laying on a sofa that usually housed throw pillows and old crocheted blankets he never touched. Sometimes his parents would sit on it for serious discussions, like his future in whichever business he wanted to choose, though they both made it clear anything other than singing or piano was the wrong choice. Then, when he moved in with Amanda, ballet was the only correct choice, and there was nobody to make happy. Eventually, he failed everyone, though Connor thinks that was rather inevitable and when in line with everything he had done before.

The floorboards creak underneath his feet as he leaves the room, closing the door quietly behind him as he takes the stairs slowly down to the kitchen. There’s a light on, the quiet sound of dishes being done. He turns the other way, avoiding the cook and her extravagantly prepared breakfast. He doesn’t want to be around anyone at all, and he can never stop recalling the time he helped the cook prepare food once and in return his father grabbed his arm so tightly that he was left with a bruise that he had to cover with long sleeves despite the heat.

It wasn’t his place, though, his father told him. And he’ll learn to never do that again. To step out of his place. But nothing is ever his place. Nothing will ever be his place. Not even being at home. That’s Markus’ place, not his. Sumo’s belongs firstly to Hank, but after, more to Gavin than it ever could to Connor. The safest he feels in his own place is his car, and even that has been tainted with the history of his family now.

Connor’s hand trails across the piano when he reaches it, unable to stop himself from doing so whenever he sees a piano. As much as he hated what his parents did to him, he would be a fool to say that he didn’t love the moments when he could play with reckless abandon, not worry about the sheet music or a teacher or the chiding comments from his parents. Maybe that is why he hates it so much sometimes. Not the pain and the suffering, but that he would’ve enjoyed singing and dancing and playing if it hadn’t been for them.

The times he had just a few spare hours home alone in his childhood were the best moments of his life when it came to his musical career. It’s a lot like when he first started to learn to dance, when he would put on a song that would never be placed in a ballet and he would spin and leap in time to it.

He hasn’t been able to create much from scratch since he was young and it was beaten out of him, but it is still his fonder memories. His only fond ones, maybe.

“You’re up early.”

Connor jumps, turning around to face his father in the doorway. “Good morning.”

“You arrived so late last night, I didn’t even get a chance to say hello to Kara.”

“She didn’t…” Connor trails off. “She’s not here.”

“No? Why not?”

“We broke up.”

“Oh,” his father scoffs. “What did you do?”

“I lived here. She wanted to go to Paris.”

The Paris part is true. Connor saw her picture in a magazine a few weeks ago. Her move had a positive impact on her career, but she made it clear that regardless of whether or not Connor could or would go with her had nothing to do with the breakup.

He doesn’t know if he would’ve followed her anyway.

“That’s what happens when you date a girl more worried about her career than a future.”

Connor grimaces, turning away. He hadn’t thought the lie through better. Hadn’t thought how it would be twisted to hurt someone who didn’t deserve it. Their relationship didn’t end positively, and Connor still feels the pain every time he thinks about her, but it doesn’t mean that it should be like this. Listening to his father or his mother find ways to dig at her and the life she led. It doesn’t matter what job she had, they would find a way to hate her.

“Did you find someone new?” his father carries on. “I heard voices in your room last night.”

“Yes,” Connor says, the same fear from the night before settling into his stomach, but so much worse now. He’s alone. No one to come to his aid if something comes from his confession. “His name is Gavin.”

“Gavin… You brought a  _ boy _ here?”

“I’m sorry, father—”

“No. Don’t apologize. But we are going hunting. You should wake him, bring him with.”

“I don’t think he’d want—”

“I don’t care what you think or what he wants. The men go hunting. Go wake him. Now.”

  
  


He kneels by the bed, staring in the pitch black at Gavin’s body, wondering if maybe he could go downstairs and tell his father that Gavin is, in fact, dead, so it would be fairly worrying to make him go hunting, man or not. His father wouldn’t buy that, unfortunately. And if he did, maybe Connor could get away with saying he’s a ghost and he shouldn’t go either.

He keeps putting this off, worrying his bottom lip until he finally gives in and pulls at Gavin’s blanket.

“Gavin?” he whispers, nudging his shoulder. “Wake up.”

“Hmm?”

“You need to get dressed. We’re leaving.”

“We’ve been here for five seconds.”

“Gavin. That’s not what I meant. We’re going hunting.”

“Oh,” he mumbles, pulling the blanket over his head. “Fuck off, then.”

“Gavin,  _ please,”  _ Connor whispers. “This isn’t up for debate.”

“I’m a vegetarian, Con, I’m not going to go hunt raccoons with you.”

“It wouldn’t be a raccoon. Why would it—”

“I’m not hunting,” Gavin says, and his voice is much clearer now, awake and alert. “Leave me alone. It’s like four in the morning.”

“You won’t have to shoot. You just have to come with. Pretend you’re a part of this. My dad always wants the kill anyway. I’d tell them you’re sick but…”

“But what?”

“Last time I tried that and I really was sick, they brought me out anyway. Said real hunters don’t get to take days off.”

“I fucking hate your family.”

“I know.”

  
  


The snow crunches underneath their feet. A few stray birds that linger in the winter-time chirp their morning songs or take off when they get close. The sound of jackets rustling, guns against fabric, fallen branches and leaves left to decompose. Gavin didn’t put up much of an argument against Connor’s father or his grandfather, but he can tell he doesn’t want to be here. The flush of his face, the way it is set in anger.

The two of them have known each other for a couple of years. They both came to work at Sumo’s around the same time, before Hank resided himself into his office during his work hours to design future soaps, making orders to replace used up micas and fragrance oils or new silicone molds shaped like gemstones or bats.

Connor hasn’t talked much to Gavin. Their conversation in the beginning was biting and callous, with Gavin spending every chance he got to brag about how his soap would turn out better than Connor’s. That was before Connor stopped trying to make them. He could always solve Gavin’s technical problems, like suspending a plastic goldfish in clear soap to make it look like a fishbowl or showing him the proper way to do a mica line.

Still, they had settled into a familiarity after all this time. Making jokes and venturing into the most vague details about their lives, Gavin lost that angry look he had on his face when he first came to Sumo’s. It’s been so long since Connor has seen it, it’s genuinely a frightening look, out here in the woods.

Their group slows to a stop, Connor’s hand twitching at his side, desperate to reach out and ask Gavin if he’s okay, terrified of making a sound and posing a question that would’ve been slapped out of his mouth had he been alone with his father.  _ Are you okay  _ is not a question men need to be asked.  _ Are you okay  _ is not something that exists within the family at all. Everyone is okay, always. Anything else is a sign of weakness.

“Gavin,” his father says from the front of the line, quiet and even. “Up there, do you see it?”

Connor follows the gesture of the gun towards the tree lines. They’re out by the water now, where the trees line the river closely. In the rainy seasons, the water level rises enough to envelope their roots and old tree stumps.

On the far side of the water is a wild turkey, picking its way across the woods.

“There’s a bridge to the left,” his father says, jutting his chin out to the other side of the river. “We can get across. I’ll let you do the honors, too.”

“The honors?” Gavin asks.

“Of shooting it,” his grandpa explains.

Gavin looks to Connor, a question in his eye, the hint of betrayal. “No, thanks. It’s… your family.”

“Nonsense. You’re with my son, aren’t you? That’s family.”

“I’ve never hunted before.”

“It’s easy, I’ll wake you through it—”

“I don’t care if it’s easy, I don’t want to do it,” Gavin says, his voice is getting louder. A little more vicious. “I’m not shooting a turkey.”

“Listen,” his father says, straightening up, looking between Gavin and Connor, eyes resting on Connor, pinning the blame on him. That’s how it will be, then. When Gavin messes up, it’ll be Connor’s fault. When Connor messes up, it’s Gavin’s fault. “It’s a bird. It’s food. I’m trying to be polite here. You should consider it—”

“Consider it what? A blessing?” Gavin shakes his head. “I don’t even eat meat. I’m not doing this and you can’t make me.”

“Gavin…” Connor says quietly, letting his name trail off, swallowed up by the silence of the winter morning. He doesn’t have anything else to say. He doesn’t know what to say at all.

Not that it matters, because the look of disgust his father is giving him would eat up his words if he had any. Gavin pulls the gun from his shoulder, pressing it into his father’s hands and turning on his heels, leaving back the way they came.

“Just like you to pick a coward,” his father says, shaking his head. “Better if he goes back to the house with the women. Seems he is one, anyway.”

Connor feels like someone is hurting him. Not a stab or a punch, but like a twist. Like someone has grabbed his insides and is turning them into a tight knot.

“I have to go talk to him,” he says, his voice coming out so much more even than it should be, but he’s had practice with talking and erasing the nerves. “Is it… Can I go?”

“Fine,” he says, spitting out the word at him, as though he is daring Connor to go.

He should stay if he wants to try and smooth over whatever the issue is here, but he is thinking of Gavin, storming off. He is thinking of him getting back to the house alone in the mood he’s in, or getting lost in the woods, and he is thinking of how horrible he was for not warning Gavin at all about his parents, about his family. He just brought him here without saying that there will be no reprieve until night comes and they get to sleep.

So he turns quickly and moves through the branches, walking too fast, scaring off birds and whatever other animals have tested out the cold morning. He finds Gavin halfway to the house, just outside of the barrier of trees where their land stretches on flat and boring, broken up only by the empty pool and their snow-covered rocks to look like a waterfall surrounds it.

“Gavin?”

“What the hell do you want?”

Connor steps forward, reaching out to him, grabbing the edge of his jacket to stop him from walking further to the house. “Are you okay?”

“No. I’m not okay,” he says, shrugging Connor off of him. “Fuck off.”

“Gavin, please—”

_ “Don’t,”  _ he says, his voice sharp, cutting Connor like a knife as he turns around. “You said they wouldn’t… you said he—”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t even have my back out there,” Gavin says. “Just fucking left me to the wolves, huh?”

“Gavin—”

“Stop. Just stop. Okay? You don’t have an excuse, do you? And I get it. You probably think this is stupid. Just a fucking… idiot weak boy that can’t shoot a turkey. What does it matter? Just a bird. Just a stupid bird,” Gavin sighs, stepping away from him, kicking at the snow hard. “I can’t do that. You can’t make me do that.”

“I’m not,” Connor whispers. “I didn’t think he would.”

But he should’ve. He should’ve the moment he brought Gavin here. He should’ve thought this through more. He should’ve come alone instead of bringing someone like Gavin that would only offer his family an excuse to torment him.

Gavin leans down, picking up a branch he’s uncovered from the snow, squatting down to draw shapes with it in the snow. Swirls lost amongst the newly destroyed surface.

“You can go,” Connor says. “If you want. I can drive you back home or pay for a car. I can tell them we broke up.”

“And turn my back on you like you turned on me?” Gavin asks, looking up to him. “Nah. That’s not how these stories end.”

“This isn’t a cheesy movie where people fall in love, Gavin.”

“No,” he says. “But if you think I’m going to leave you alone with them, you’re wrong.”

“Really?” Connor asks. “Why would you do that? Why would you protect me?”

Gavin shakes his head, as though the refusal to answer is going to make the question go away. Connor crouches down beside him, taking the stick from his hand. “Gavin?”

“I told you before,” Gavin says quietly. “Last night. You aren’t the only one to have a bad family. I know what it’s like to be left alone in that situation. That’s all.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I’m sure.”

“Are you still mad at me?” Connor asks quietly. “Because I’m really sorry.”

“It’s fine,” he says, poking Connor in the knee with the stick. “You just owe me a lot more than dishes.”

“Like what?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” he says. “But I’ll let you know when I figure it out.”

“Okay.”

  
  


They head up to the house together, Gavin taking his hand when they get a little closer, leaning in close against his side and whispering that someone is watching them from one of the windows. Connor plasters a smile onto his face, hoping it makes him look like he’s in love and not incredibly nervous at the prospect of being spied on. This is the most he’ll do, as well. He’s not going to kiss Gavin to show anybody that they’re actually together. No need to, either. His family would hate the PDA and he would hate kissing someone, especially Gavin, as an act instead of a want.

He was spied on a lot growing up. Any of his lessons he had with teachers, his parents were there, peering through the doorway, ready to assign extra notes and homework that the instructors might’ve missed.

When they reach the house, though, the back door opens to a smiling, wonderfully happy, Chloe.

“Look at you,” she says, opening her arms up for a hug. Connor departs from Gavin’s side in a second without a moment’s hesitation, enveloping her quickly, squeezing her a little too tight. “I missed you. You weren’t here last year.”

“Yes, I had a brief moment where I ran away.”

“Don’t do it again,” she says quietly. “I really hate being here alone.”

So does he.

“Why were you even here at all?” he asks, taking a step back. “I’m sure they would’ve…”

He trails off, watching her shake her head. “I tried that. They didn’t listen. They said that… I should be with family. Especially if I wanted to prove myself.”

“Of course they did,” Connor says quietly, looking behind her to see if his mother or Amanda are there trying to eavesdrop. When he decides the coast is clear, he looks to Gavin. “This is Chloe. Chloe, Gavin.”

“Very bold of you to bring a boyfriend,” Chloe says, holding out her hand to Gavin. “Nice to meet you. I hope they haven’t traumatized you yet.”

“They got very close,” Gavin replies, taking her hand. “How are you related to the family?”

“Same way you are. Proximity to one of the boys.”

Gavin looks between them with a quizzical look. Right. Connor never told him about this. Why would he?

“Connor’s brother was my husband,” she says, the smile on her face falling. “And I guess you should know they’re both worth suffering through Christmas once a year.”

Gavin is looking at Connor, but he has turned his gaze to Chloe, refusing to look at him, to see whatever question he has on his face, because Connor knows what ones there will be.

_ A brother? _

_ ‘Was’? _

“We should get inside,” Connor says. “It’s freezing out here.”

“Right. Come on, then.”

They come inside, stomping their feet on the rug, hanging up jackets. Connor sets the gun down on the bench, leaving it for his father to return to the basement. Connor won’t go down there. He’s not allowed, not that he would want to.

They head into the living room, where Chloe takes a seat on the couch and starts talking with Gavin about what his participation for Christmas is. What will happen and what he’ll be a part of. No gifts on Christmas. The family doesn’t believe in presents, which is for the better if Gavin doesn’t receive any at all. Everything Connor has ever been given has been tied to some kind of unspoken contract. New shoes meant joining the track team, tickets to a concert meant losing his bedroom door.

But there won’t be much to do this trip. The hunting in the morning is his family’s primary concern until tomorrow and even then, he and Gavin won’t be a part of it. It will be the women, locked behind the kitchen doors cooking from morning until dinner time. Kara would complain at length about it when they left, taking up the entirety of the drive home with describing each and every one of the insult-laced compliments Amanda and his mother would throw at her and Chloe. It’s the only day his mother and aunt cook the entire year.

And tonight—

Tonight he will have to play.

“Gavin,” he says, turning away from the piano. “I’m going upstairs to the library if you need me, alright?”

“Okay,” he says. “Do you want me to go with?”

“No. I’m fine.” Him and Chloe seem to be getting along well, anyway. Which is nice. Neither of them will be entirely alone.

He leaves them quickly, taking the steps up to the second floor quickly, finding his way through the hallways to the library, closing the door behind him to be locked away with shelves and shelves of books he has never and will likely never read.

He used to hide here, when he was a kid. Found his way up the stairs and down the hall and behind the couch, laying there against the floorboards hoping he could get away. The maids only come in here once a week to dust off the books, and his parents only come here to add a book to the collection, which they stopped doing when he was nine and they ran out of space.

He walks over to the couch, sitting down and pulling a pillow onto his lap, twisting the ends of the tassels over and over again. Tonight he’ll play a song for his family for the first time since his brother left.

Died.

Not left. Even if it is easier to think of it that way.

He squeezes his eyes closed, refusing to open them until he’s certain that he won’t cry.

  
  


The creak of footsteps is what wakes him, but it isn’t until he hears the turn of the doorknob that he jolts upright, hands smoothing his hair and his shirt. He doesn’t pause until he sees it’s Gavin stepping inside, and he lets out a little breath of relief.

“Do you know how fucking hard it is to find this place?” Gavin asks, closing the door behind him.

“You shouldn’t swear,” Connor replies. “If my mother hears you, she might wash your mouth out with soap.”

“Literally?”

Connor nods, “It’s not fun. Just so you know.”

“Jesus. They did a fucking number on you, didn’t they?” Gavin asks. “Must’ve been hard growing up here.”

“It’s fine. I wasn’t alone.”

“No. Not at first, huh?”

Connor shakes his head, “I don’t want to talk about him.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s dead,” Connor says, letting the words fall out so much easier than they have ever been said, maybe because he’s angry. So viciously angry at someone for dying like it was his fault. “It hurts.”

“I know.”

“You know?” Connor laughs. “How could you possibly know?”

“Well, first off, my brother moved to the other side of the world when I was sixteen and I’ve only seen him once since.”

“Must suck,” he says quietly.

“Yeah. It’s not him dying, but you know…” Gavin trails off. “I don’t get what that’s like, Connor, but I know what it feels like to have everyone run away. I guess it’s sort of like… I was the one that died.”

“How so?”

Gavin steps forward, hands in his pockets as he moves closer to the table. He isn’t wearing the same thing from this morning. He’s wearing clothes that Connor recognizes, but not from things Gavin has actually worn. His parents really did send up new clothes to his room for Gavin to wear. Khakis that Connor had left behind a few years ago. A crimson sweater that his mother knitted five years ago for the whole family to wear for the Christmas picture they took in the middle of July when Niles and Chloe were preparing for their wedding, when it was swelteringly hot in the house and his parents were still sending out holiday cards to friends.

He looks so horribly out of place like this.

“Can I tell you about that later?” Gavin asks. “Doesn’t feel like something to talk about right now.”

“If I don’t have to tell you about my brother, sure. It’s a deal.”

“Good,” Gavin says, taking the seat next to him. “Your family sucks, by the way.”

“You said that once.”

“I just wanted to say it again. Just so you know we’re in agreement. I spent the last three hours talking to your dad about football. I fucking hate football but I couldn’t tell him that because any time I alluded to not liking someone traditionally masculine—”

“He looked like he wanted to kill you?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Which is stupid, you know?”

“I know.”

Gavin reaches for the pillow that Connor had been using, resting it on his lap, tugging on the tassels, turning them opposite of the way that Connor had knotted them up before he fell asleep.

“We could run away,” Gavin says. “Pack our bags. Get out of here. You never have to see them again.”

“They’re my family, Gavin. I can’t go.”

“Because of DNA? Fuck that, Con. Seriously. Blood doesn’t mean shit. I see how scared you are around them. You don’t deserve to feel that way. They’re hurting you. And if I can see that from being here for less than a day—”

“They aren’t hurting me,” Connor says quietly. “They never hit me.”

Which is a lie, but Connor can’t take it back now. He can’t explain how it was his fault or that it wasn’t that bad. They left a few bruises every so often, but it was fine. He was fine. He doesn’t have scars on the back of his hands where they hit him with rulers. He doesn’t have healed fractures on his legs where he was smacked with a cane.

He has no scars to prove any of it.

It’s like it never happened at all.

Sometimes that thought frightens him. He’ll wake up in the middle of the night thinking about being hit and looking at his skin for some kind of proof and there is none. He’ll convince himself he made it all up. He hallucinated how horrible his past was.

Most of it’s just words.

But it’s not like those words didn’t put him on the top of Markus’ house, wondering if the three-story drop would be enough to kill him or just maim him.

“They don’t have to hit you to hurt you, Connor,” Gavin whispers. “Pain is real whether or not it’s physical.”

“I’m fine. It’s only for a few days. I told you, if you want to go, you can go.”

“And I told you I’m not leaving you here.”

“Because you think you’re just like me?” Connor asks. “Because your brother left you? Because… what? Because your dad drank? Because your mom yelled? It’s not the same, Gavin. We aren’t the same. I didn’t ask you to come here to protect me and I didn’t ask you to stay with me to lecture me.”

“Why  _ did  _ you ask me to come here, Connor?”

He doesn’t know.

The question rings inside of his head, bouncing off the walls, smacking him hard.

_ He doesn’t know. _

Not even a little bit.

It would be easy to say he asked Gavin here just so he didn’t have to be alone or that he could prove to his parents he wasn’t hung up on losing Kara. He didn’t ask Gavin to be here as a knight in shining armor. He doesn’t have an answer for his question.

“It’s almost lunch time,” Connor says quietly. “They’ll be expecting us.”


	3. late night thoughts

He can’t avoid Gavin after lunch, even if he would prefer it. It’s not like his parents expect affection between them, but they would view it as suspicious if Connor outright never went near Gavin at all, which he would prefer. The only way they allowed Connor’s disappearance before was because Gavin told them the truth. Connor took a nap in the library, the late night drive and the early morning hunting trip both wore him out. It is a wonder how his father didn’t bring up the hunting incident to his mother or his aunt, though he assumes that story is being told behind closed doors, away from where Connor can hear them.

The only part of this ordeal that benefits Connor, it seems, is the lack of affection he has to show Gavin at all. His parents would be enraged if he held Gavin’s hand. They didn’t kick him out of the family, but if he were to kiss Gavin on the cheek, it would be disrespectful to their beliefs. His mother has already told him that she finds it quite callous of Connor to be sharing a room with Gavin under her roof, though he doesn’t plan on changing that arrangement.

Connor is a sinner to them, despite their lack of religion. So he doesn’t do much more than stand beside Gavin and engage in hushed conversation about the most generic things. The floorboards being real wood from the original structure of the house, the counters in the bathroom real granite, the curtains silk imported from a country he gets wrong and receives a not so subtle snide correction from Amanda.

“Connor?” his mother calls from the other side of the room. “Dinner will be soon, and your father and I would appreciate it if you played us a song.”

She says it as if it wasn’t written in stone when he was seven years old and was first deemed good enough at playing for the family. Back when it wasn’t so small. When his grandmother and uncle were alive and crowded around the piano to listen.

That was when Niles was alive, too. He hasn’t played since his brother’s death. Not for his family. The last year he was here with Kara was the last year he saw his brother. Niles played the piano, too. He was much better at it. They each had a song they played and his family would clap and they would somehow find a way to compliment both of their pieces while tearing them to shreds at the same time, so they both felt better and worse than the other.

“Of course, mother,” he says. “I’d be honored.”

He sees Gavin roll his eyes from the other side of the room, where he’s retreated to Chloe’s side. At least he has an ally in this home.

Connor takes a seat at the piano, watching the family move into the room. His mother and father by the doorway, Amanda and his grandfather on the sofa. Chloe and Gavin moving ever so closely, but Chloe bent close to Gavin’s ear, whispering something secretive to him while the room falls to silence.

He lifts the cover from the keys, breathing in slowly, trying to think of what to play. He has played dozens of songs for his parents on Christmas eve. He has played thousands and thousands of songs. They have never expected a holiday song today, just a faux-recital where Connor can show off his talent to prove whether or not their money on his lessons was worth it or not. But Connor has never played one of his own songs. Things that exist in scribbled notes and vague memories. There are words attached to those songs, hidden and buried deep, too real and too exposing of their life for them to hear.

So he chooses a song that is happy. A song that doesn’t reflect him at all. A song that almost seems hopeful in a way that he hasn’t been in a long, long time.

He plays and he keeps his mouth shut and he swallows the words that come with it, just like he swallows the question that Gavin asked him that keeps echoing in his mind.

_ Why did you bring me here? _

Not to prove to his parents he wasn’t hopeless and could never find love. That would be preferable than listening to their remarks about them dating. Not because he was scared of sleeping alone in a room that he once shared with his brother until they were five. Not because he couldn’t stand the idea of being here alone. He knew Chloe would come, desperate to prove that she’s a part of the family and didn’t marry Niles just for money.

He asked Gavin to come here because he has been waiting and waiting for an excuse to be with him somewhere other than the inside of Sumo’s.

He really fucked this up, though, didn’t he?

  
  


When the song ends, they move to the dining room, a conversation about his song following them to the next room, ignited by his mother, who always asks for people’s critique on her sons’ works, encouraging any and all negative comments. His father, who taught him how to play, always provides them when nobody else will.

“I liked it,” Chloe says, offering him a smile. “It reminded me of when I was a little girl and we would make snow angels during winter break or bake cookies for Santa.”

“Right,” his mother replies. “Of course you baked cookies for Santa. I hope you wouldn’t raise our grandchildren with such frivolous ideas about supernatural figures robbing homes.”

“Is it really robbery if he’s  _ giving  _ the kids stuff?” Gavin asks.

“It’s breaking and entering,” his mother replies, narrowing her eyes. “We don’t want tales of criminals told in our family to impressionable children.”

“It’s just a story,” Gavin says. “What harm can come from that?”

“Well,” she looks up and down Gavin’s outfit, like she is reminding herself that the clothes he wears are not his, but Connor’s old clothes, and the cuff of his pants are not for fashion, but because they’re too long. “I already have my answer. Not that it really matters when it comes to you and Connor.”

“Excuse me?” Gavin asks.

“You won’t be having grandchildren, so it doesn’t affect the family,” she says, taking a seat beside his father. “Two men can’t have kids together.”

Gavin looks over to Connor and he promptly looks away, finding Chloe’s blank stare as she finds her seat. She hasn’t said a word since his mother brought up grandchildren. She won’t be giving her grandchildren, either, not by blood, but he wouldn’t put it past his mother to claim whatever children she does have, regardless of blood.

“We could adopt,” Gavin says.

“What?” his father laughs. “Adopt?”

“Gavin,” Connor says quietly. “That wasn’t what she meant.”

“Then what did she mean?” he asks. He isn’t sitting down, even after Connor takes his seat. His hands are clutching the back of the chair, digging against it, white knuckles and anger on his face.

“I mean, it’s completely inappropriate to raise a child in a home with two fathers,” she says. “Sit, please.”

“Why is it inappropriate? The kid would have two loving parents. Doesn’t that matter?”

“Gavin,” Connor says again, trying to make his voice as much of a warning as possible. “Please let it go.”

“Yes, please,” his grandfather says. “I’d like to eat without an argument. It’s Christmas Eve. It’s no time to be talking about these kinds of subjects.”

“I’d like an answer, though,” Gavin says. “Why do you find it inappropriate?”

“For goodness sake, Gavin,” his mother replies. “You know exactly why, so just sit down and mind your manners. I swear, Connor always finds the absolute bottom of the barrel to bring here and just when we think it can’t possibly get any worse, he manages that, too.”

“You—”

“Gavin, stop it,” Connor says, his voice louder this time, harsher. He hates himself for it. Hates that he is cutting someone off who is only defending himself. “Let it go.”

“Yes, let it go, son, you’re outnumbered here,” his father says. “And if you had any kind of common sense, you’d drop this especially after this morning.”

“What happened this morning?” Amanda asks.

_ Stop it,  _ Connor thinks quietly, digging his nails into his palms again.  _ Stop stop stop— _

“The boy refused to kill the turkey for Christmas dinner. Can you believe that? It’s just a bird.”

“Bottom of the barrel, remember?”

Gavin’s presence beside him disappears, footsteps echoing away. Connor looks up from his lap, finding Chloe’s gaze. She is staring at him with an expression he can’t read. Anger and pain and sadness. Telling him a thousand things he already knows but can’t do anything about.

If he leaves his family one more time to comfort Gavin, especially when they’ve made it clear they are hellbent on pushing him out of their circle—

_ Does it matter? _

Does it matter what they do to him?

He stands slowly, feeling all eyes drawn to him.

“Where are you going, Connor?”

“Gavin,” he says quietly. “I need… I need to talk to him.”

“If you leave this table, you won’t be getting anything to eat for tonight.”

He looks over to Chloe, sitting there with her tortured expression, and he remembers when Niles first brought her over on Thanksgiving. When she was trying her hardest to get along with the family. How many lies they caught her in, how they hated her, how they were convinced she was going to steal their money and run away. When she and Niles announced their engagement, she gave up everything she could to give them what they wanted for their wedding. She would’ve bent over backwards for the rest of her life trying to please this family.

And look where she is now.

A widow with nowhere to go lest she prove all their worries real.

She can’t even be free from them with Niles’ death.

He can’t do that to Gavin. He can’t let him get pushed aside and hurt. Not when this isn’t going to go any further than it already has. He should’ve done more for Chloe. He should’ve done a lot more for Kara. But all he has now is Gavin.

“I’m not hungry,” he says. “So I’d like to be excused.”

“That’s quite alright, then,” his mother says with a sigh. “Go tend to your wounded boy. Make sure he knows this is a family that needs a thick skin and he’ll have to learn how to grow one.”

He nods, like he believes her, and he leaves the table quickly, passing by Chloe and trying his hardest not to look her in the eye again as he exits the room.

  
  


Gavin is on the bed, laying on his back, staring at the ceiling when Connor steps inside. He’s shed the khakis and the sweater, replaced them only with a shredded hoodie, his legs left remarkably bare and Connor turns around on instinct, staring at the wooden door, eyes stuck to the grain embedded in the wood.

“I’m sorry about them,” he says. “I’m… I’m really sorry, Gavin.”

“You keep saying that every time they fuck me over, Con.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I can’t… I can’t say anything to them.”

“Because you’re afraid.”

He’s quiet for a long moment before he nods slowly, “Yes.”

“You left dinner though, huh?”

He nods again, “Once everyone goes to sleep tonight, we can sneak downstairs and get something to eat.”

“No supper for the deserters?”

“Afraid not.”

“Okay,” he sighs. “Con?”

“What?”

“Why are you staring at the door like a creepy kid in a low-budget horror flick?”

His face flushes, “You… you aren’t wearing pants.”

“Oh. I don’t mind if you see, you know. You aren’t invading my privacy.”

“Maybe you’re invading mine,” Connor replies. “I’d prefer if you got dressed.”

“Right. Sorry.”

He waits by the door in silence as the bed creaks, the sound of a zipper being undone, fabric moving. Then, a hand on his waist, pulling him away from the door by his belt loop, turning him around. When he faces Gavin, he is standing very close to him. Far closer than he has been all day.

“I would’ve appreciated a warning, you know,” Gavin says quietly. “About your parents being bat shit crazy bigots.”

“I would’ve, too,” Connor says quietly. “Maybe I would’ve chosen to be absorbed in the womb.”

Gavin laughs, shaking his head, “Fair.”

“Gavin, if there’s a way I can make this up to you, you know I would. Just tell me and I’ll try and fix it.”

“No. It’s fine,” he says. “Although I haven’t gotten one single thank you for all this yet.”

Connor leans forward, pressing a kiss against Gavin’s cheek, “Thank you.”

“Wow,” he whispers. “You’re welcome.”

  
  


They play cards on the floor. Go Fish and Canasta and Solitaire. They kill time with the deck of cards that Connor got when he was ten years old with a ten dollar bill he found outside of school and hid away because his parents never wanted him to have toys. He only has a few things that he’s kept secret like this from his parents, but the cards are the only thing left in the house.

And they can’t exactly leave the room. His mother would start a conversation, asking him questions about Gavin. His father would start an argument, telling him how disrespectful it was to leave the dinner table like that. And he can’t look at Chloe. Not right now. He feels too cruel. Leaving the table felt like he was standing up for Gavin until he got into the room and realized he hadn’t said a single word to defend him. He just fled with the most carefully constructed sentences he could find.

When it’s finally late enough to sneak downstairs for food, Connor leads Gavin to the kitchen, where he watches Gavin sit up on the counter, eating a cold slice of garlic bread while the microwave hums and spins a plate of pasta around.

“I’ve never had such a non-Christmas feeling Christmas Eve,” Gavin says. “And this is coming from somebody who spent the last ten Christmases alone.”

“They don’t like what the holiday has become,” Connor replies. “All about gifts and not about family. They aren’t religious, but…”

“But?”

“Nothing,” he says, shaking his head. “They just like family dinners.”

“So they can have everyone in your bloodline witness them tearing you down for hitting one wrong note in an otherwise impeccable piano piece?” Gavin asks. “And what the fuck was that about, anyway? You told me you weren’t that good. You’re incredible.”

“Not to them.”

“Who the fuck cares about them?” Gavin asks. “They’re assholes.”

“They’re my family.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Gavin says quietly. “Family is shit. I told you.”

“Gavin, we can’t all be like you.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“We can’t all abandon our family and spend Christmas at home getting drunk and watching Jeopardy at five in the morning.”

“Who said anything about Jeopardy?”

Connor sighs, turning around to stop the microwave before it reaches the last second, “No one. It doesn’t matter. It’s just… my brother is dead. They’re all I have left.”

“They’re fucking you over. They told you to your face if you’re ever with a guy you can never have a family. They probably don’t even want you to get married unless it’s to a girl they decide is perfect.”

He’s not wrong. Kara is probably the closest he’ll ever get, and the moment they knew things were over, Kara was suddenly this cold, manipulative career woman.

“Gavin, if I ever loved someone like you enough to marry, do you really think I would stay with my family?” Connor asks.

“But you don’t.”

“No,” he says. “I don’t. So if you’d be a little bit less of a dick, you’ll stop asking me to run away from the only people I have.”

“I’m just trying to look out for you, Con.”

“Well, I’d appreciate it if you stopped.”

“Fine. I’ll stop.”

  
  


They make their way upstairs, dishes left in the sink, argument left behind. They’re quiet as they get back to the room, closing the door shut behind them. Gavin is in the bathroom, brushing his teeth and washing his face. Connor stands against the door jamb, watching him. He’s changed into pajamas. A pair of red plaid pants, an old band t-shirt that Connor recognizes quickly. Gavin’s worn it before, a hundred times. It isn’t until he walks over to the bathroom door close to Connor that he notices the scent attached to it. Strong, like it’s soaked into the fabric and refuses to leave. Peppermint. The bottle that Gavin dropped a week ago when they were making candy-cane soaps.

“Con?”

“Hm?”

“You’re in my way.”

“Sorry,” he says quietly, moving away from the door frame to let Gavin pass. “Tomorrow morning… we might have to apologize to my family to prevent everything going up in flames, you know. It doesn’t have to be genuine, but—”

“I’m not going to apologize to them. You can tell them we broke up, though. If it saves you anything.”

“Oh. Are you… do you want to leave?”

“No. I’ll stay until you leave.”

“But—”

“Con, I’m just trying to help you out here. I’m not going to lie to them and say I’m okay with the shit they said. If you need to to protect yourself, go for it.”

“Okay,” he says quietly. “I guess… it’s time for bed, then?”

Gavin nods, “I’ll take the sofa tonight.”

“Gavin, come on—”

“No. Seriously. You take the bed.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Connor turns around, shutting the light off, sending their room into darkness. He takes a step forward, immediately colliding against Gavin. A foot stomping on his, a forehead hitting his chin.

“Fucking Christ—”

“What are you doing?” Connor says, his hands reaching out in the darkness to find Gavin’s form and see where exactly he is before taking another step. “I thought you were going to the couch.”

“I was going to charge my phone. I didn’t think you were going to turn the light off that quick.”

“Sorry,” Connor says with a laugh. He’s aware they’re both standing very close to each other, neither of them moving backwards in the collision, just frozen stationary in front of each other. “Where’s your phone?”

“Bathroom. I left it on the counter. Can I get through?”

“Right. Yeah. Sorry.”

“Fuck, Con, stop apologizing for every little thing you do,” he says. He feels a hand hit his arm. “Move to your left, I’ll go right.”

He does, taking one step to his left, before immediately walking straight into Gavin again.

“You said left—”

“Yeah, and I realize that those were the same directions. Okay. You stay still. Just. Don’t fucking move until I’m past you.”

He feels the body move, the shift in the air, the body passing his. When he’s certain Gavin isn’t in front of him, he walks towards the bed on memory, finding the mattress and pulling the blanket back. It’s so much darker than he remembers, and he lies there, staring at the curtain covering the window, hiding any sense of moonlight or life beyond. When he was younger, he got the black-out curtains when he was afraid of seeing shadows of trees and people outside, but now the pitch-black nature of the room is making his heart beat a little too fast in his chest. No extreme exhaustion like the night before that made him fall asleep the moment he closed his eyes. No familiar comfort of the library and the sun from this morning to let him nap for far too long.

A blue glow illuminates the corner of the room, showing only enough light to outline the shape of Gavin’s legs as he makes his way over to the bed by Connor’s side.

“Hey.”

“Hi,” Gavin says. “My charger is over here.”

“Oh.”

“I put it on silent, not that anyone calls me, but I get like eighty emails in the middle of the night.”

“Maybe you should unsubscribe.”

“Never seems to work,” Gavin says with a laugh. “Good night, Connor.”

“Good night, Gavin,” he says. He watches the phone screen light up in response to being plugged in, the flashlight shutting off a second later. Then he reaches out, grasping for Gavin’s wrist but instead finding his leg. “Sorry,” he pulls his hand away. “Gavin?”

“Hm?”

“Can you do me a favor?”

“Another one?”

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “Can you stay?”

“Stay?”

“In the bed. With me.”

“Oh,” he replies. “Just to be clear, if you want anything, I didn’t pack condoms.”

“Just to be clear,” Connor replies. “That’s not what I want.”

“What do you want, then?”

He sits up, trying to figure out where Gavin’s face is in the dark, “Company.”

“Yeah?” he asks. “Scared?”

“A little.”

“Me, too,” Gavin replies. “Scooch over.”

Connor does, leaving Gavin a gap on the bed, big enough to create a space between them, but he lays on his side, looking somewhere in the blackness at Gavin’s body. “Thanks.”

Gavin hums a response and they stay there in the dark for a long time. Connor’s eyes adjust just enough to make out Gavin’s silhouette. The smell of peppermint is far too strong, almost suffocatingly so, but it’s nice, too. It reminds him of the days spent at Sumo’s making soaps. When things were so much easier and simpler. When Christmas, for a moment, wasn’t awkward family dinners that left him choked up and upset, but spraying glitters on the top of soaps, of selecting piping tips and embed molds, packaging things up in Christmas printed papers and stamping the outline of snowmen onto bars.

“Connor?”

His voice startles him a little bit. He thought Gavin fell asleep. That he was the only one lying awake at night thinking about things that don’t matter.

“What?”

“You know how I told you earlier that I was the one that died?”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t die, but I got pretty close to it,” Gavin says quietly. “When I was fifteen, I was dating this guy. He was six years older than I was. I didn’t realize how creepy it was at the time. He seemed nice. He wasn’t, and when I tried to break up with him, I did it in a really dumb way.”

“How so?”

“We were driving. We had left a restaurant because he recognized someone there and didn’t want anyone to know he was dating a minor. I was really fucking pissed about it, because he kept going on about how mature I was for my age. And so we were arguing in the car on the way to his place and I told him I wanted to end things,” Gavin says. “When he asked me if I was serious, I said yeah, and he told me that I was… doesn’t matter. He crashed the car. Died on impact. Wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. Neither was I. But I was… lucky, I guess.”

“I’m sorry, Gavin.”

“Don’t worry,” he says, laughing humorlessly. “That wasn’t the worst. I was in a coma for three years. My parents were divorced. My sister was married. My brother moved away. Said he was convinced I wasn’t going to live, but then… three years is a long time, Con. People move on. Everyone gives up on waiting eventually. And it’s not just that. You don’t just wake up and have to make up for three years. I spent a long time in rehab trying to gain my muscle mass back. I had to learn how to walk all over again. And then therapy… it ends up being a lot more than three years you lose.”

“I’m sorry that happened to you, Gavin,” Connor whispers. “You didn’t deserve that.”

“Just like you don’t deserve what your parents do to you,” Gavin replies. “I won’t ask you to leave again, Con. I won’t tell you what to do. Just know that if you want to, I’ll be here. If you want to get in the car and drive off and never talk to them again, I’ll do that. I’ll be here for you.”

“Thank you.”

He feels Gavin’s hand reach out. It hits his shoulder, then his chest, ends against his face, a thumb curling across his cheek.

“Get some sleep, Con. And merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas, Gavin,” he whispers back.


	4. god knows i'm trying

Connor wakes an hour later to a heavy thumping sound and he extricates himself from the tangled blanket wrapped up between him and Gavin. He makes his way through the bedroom slowly, opening up the door and leaning out into the dark hallway as if the shadows would explain to him where it came from. When nothing is provided to him, he glances back to Gavin.

He could stay here. Go back to sleep. Lay in the cozy warmth provided by the blanket and another human being. Or he could go investigate the noise. His family would all be asleep, or at the very least, not make this noise, and he’s always been good at creeping around the upstairs to spy on conversations between his parents.

Really, he thinks it’s probably Chloe or a burglar.

He opts to believe it’s Chloe.

Connor slips down the hallway, around the bend towards the stairs. He can hear the quiet sound of a piano playing, too quiet for it to be someone in the house playing the actual piano. There’s a tinny effect to it. Broken and mutilated. Then--someone singing.

Not just anyone, though.

He knows who’s voice that is. And maybe it isn’t opera, but Connor would recognize his brother’s voice regardless of whether it was opera or not.

“Chloe?” he says quietly, turning around the corner.

He finds her at the piano bench, leaning against her hand, looking down at the covered up keys. She reaches for her phone, surprise registering on her face as she pauses the recording.

“H-Hi. Aren’t you supposed to be asleep?”

“Aren’t you?”

“Yes, well…” she trails off. “It’s hard being in his room without him.”

Connor looks to the phone, thinking about the snatches of song he had heard. Not something he recognizes. Maybe just something he’s never heard of before or maybe it’s something more. Maybe Niles wrote it for Chloe.

Doesn’t matter.

The look on her face says enough.

It doesn’t matter how many recordings or songs or content he put out in the world. It doesn’t matter if she can play them back. What matters is that he’s gone. The person. Stripped of all his talents and skill, she still wants him back.

So does Connor.

He wishes he hadn’t spent the last ten years barely speaking to him.

“Why did you come back here?” Connor whispers. If it was him, he would’ve never returned. He would’ve run away and never come back. Fuck his parents for needing Chloe to prove she was more than a gold digger. He would finally be free of it.

“Why do you?” she returns.

“Are we making a habit of just asking the same question back to each other rather than giving answers?” Connor asks.

“Maybe,” she says with a sad smile. “He’s all I really had left, you know. My family all live on the other side of the country. They all have kids and spouses. My parents moved to Europe to retire. Now he’s gone. Being here reminds me of him a little bit.”

He doesn’t understand, but he isn’t going to press. He doesn’t know what this place represented to him and Chloe. He only knows what it represents to himself. They got married here. Maybe it’s something positive in a small way, at the very least.

“So, Connor, why did you come back?” she asks. “You missed last year. Why return?”

He could say the thing he has been telling himself for a while. That he came back because he was scared of the repercussions from his parents if he didn’t. That maybe he would be cut off from money he desperately needs to set himself up properly, to give to Hank and buy better supplies and tools for Sumo’s, to move away entirely, to donate to charities, etc, etc, etc--

Or he could tell Chloe the truth.

“I’m alone, too.”

“You have Gavin.”

He suffocates the scoff that threatens to expose how much of a lie that is, and he’s thankful for the darkness in the room that hides his watery-eyed expression. He doesn’t have Gavin, though. He’s fucked everything up with Gavin. Yes, he sort of wanted to be with him, at first just to get over Kara and now because he genuinely cares for him and wants him. But he’s ruined it by bringing Gavin here. He’s ruined every chance they have at a positive relationship by starting it off like  _ this. _

“Chloe… I wanted to say I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “For everything they put you through. For your loss.”

“It’s your loss, too.”

But it’s different. Connor lost a brother that he was estranged from. Chloe lost a husband who she was desperately in love with. The kind of love that can be seen and so easily felt and understood even during the times when his parents were making their feelings about her inclusion in the family known.

“Right,” Connor replies. “Still. I could’ve said something.”

“Niles could’ve, too. I understood. Your family is… complicated.”

It’s not an excuse, but he nods like he understands. As though his apology was made solely to feel better about not telling his parents to back off of a widow than to try and make up for what those comments did to Chloe’s emotional and mental health.

“You know the weeks leading up to his death…” she says quietly. “He was… louder than usual. More talkative. He told me he loved me every time he saw me. He would leave me nice notes. He took breaks from his work, days off, just to take me somewhere nice like a restaurant or a movie or…”

She pauses, her eyes on her phone, picking it up and clutching it tightly.

“Chloe?”

“I thought for some reason that things were getting better, Connor, but I was wrong. Things were getting worse. I don’t know if he was trying to make the last few weeks of his life feel more positive for me or if he was trying to convince himself he was okay but… I’m certain that the crash wasn’t an accident,” she whispers. “He left me a voicemail in the middle of the night. He always worked late. I always put my phone on silent. I’m such a light sleeper. And I woke to the police at my door and I sat in that hospital listening to the message he left me and his words were so… slurred. He sounded so tired. He said he was sorry. He told me he loved me.”

It is different thinking something and knowing something.

It is different assuming that his parents lives, their expectations, Niles breaking down and trying his hardest, led to a suicide covered up with an accident. It is different thinking these things and being told it.

“Chloe--”

“Sorry,” she whispers. “You should get some sleep, Connor.”

_ After this? _

And yet, his feet are telling him to move. To run away. To retreat from this darkened room and pretend that he never heard this. Easier to run than to believe.

So he nods in response, lacking any words that would be the right thing to say, because he is numb and broken and thinking of his brother in his final moments knowing that nothing will ever, ever be good enough for his parents.

He turns to leave before pausing at the staircase, looking back to Chloe’s form as her phone screen lights up again, the song playing quietly. It is a love song. Not one that calls Chloe by name, but by a hundred words all crafted to describe exactly who she is.

He creeps up half the staircase, sitting down and leaning against the railing, listening to the faint song play. When it ends, Chloe starts it over again. And he listens to the sound of a ghost whispering in the night. He leaves when it ends, giving Chloe her privacy as he makes his back to the bedroom.

When he opens the door and climbs into the bed, he doesn’t really care about waking Gavin when he pulls the blanket around himself tightly, though he hears him mumble something in response to him tugging a little too hard on the blanket.

“Con?”

“Go back to sleep.”

“Where’d you go?” Gavin whispers, reaching out for him. His fingers grace his chin, brush across his lips.

“Just downstairs. I thought I heard something.”

“Serial killer?”

“Just Chloe,” he whispers. “Go back to sleep.”

“Stop telling me what to do,” he replies, his voice hoarse and broken from sleep. “Was she okay?”

“Debatable.”

“And you?”

“What about me?”

“Are you okay?”

His heart beats fast, scared and frightened and those tears stinging his eyes again, “I don’t think so.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” he says. “I’m tired. I just… I want to sleep.”

And never wake up.

If that was death--

Just bizarre hallucinogenic dreams that never made any sense--

He would never want to wake up.

So much easier to exist in these false worlds than the real one.

“Okay,” Gavin says. “Come here.”

“W-what?”

“Come here. I’m going to hug you.”

Connor huffs out a little breath, annoyed and more than a little mad about this. How demanding Gavin is, how much he would like that. Gavin is the one offering and this will be the second to last night they spend together, so why not?

He shifts closer in the bed, letting Gavin steal back part of the blanket that Connor had ripped away from him. He feels Gavin’s arms snake around his back, holding him close. He rests his head against Gavin’s chest, listening to the quiet beat of his heart.

“When did you become so nice?” Connor asks quietly.

“Do you want me to stop?”

“Yes. It was much more preferable when you were a dick all the time.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t assume I’m a heartless asshole. I can be compassionate sometimes.”

“Sometimes.”

He feels Gavin kiss the top of his head. What he thinks is a kiss on the top of his head. He doesn’t mind if it is or it isn’t. It helps. It helps with the tightness in his chest and the tears in his eyes and it helps feeling arms around him rather than cold and darkness.

It takes a lot in him not to pull back and kiss Gavin. To steal more from him. But he likes this, too. No pressure. Just comfort.

  
  


He wakes slowly, curled up small and tucked against Gavin’s chest, the blanket drawn around the both of them, arms holding him close. Connor doesn’t move. When his eyes open and he spies Gavin still sleeping, he lets himself close his eyes again, pretending to be asleep. If his alarm hasn’t gone off yet, he still has time, but he can see that the sun has already started to rise, and he’ll likely only have a handful of minutes before his parents will expect everyone to be downstairs.

When Connor was a child, he never got the sickly sweet memories of Christmas. It has always been like this. It’s never changed. He has been stuck forever in a family that deems presents as things for selfish children and Christmas activities as manipulating religious foundations to please the masses. He’s missed out on so many Christmas traditions that he has never understood why people look forward to the holiday season so much.

One of the only good things that has come from Christmas in the last ten years is seeing his brother. His brother who followed the path laid out for him when Connor did not. His brother who died trying to prove that he could be exactly what his parents wanted.

Gavin’s body shifts beside him, arms tightening around him, his breathing changing.

Awake now.

Pretending just like Connor is pretending.

He misses this. He misses early mornings and being held. He misses feeling like he was anything other than a disappointment of a child that continues to fail.

So he keeps pretending to be asleep, letting the minutes tick by far too fast, until his alarm rings and they part ways with awkward laughs as they get ready for the morning.

  
  


“Hey, Con?”

“Yes?” he says, pinning a button to his sweater. A shiny thing that looks like a penguin with a glittery Santa hat. One little rebellion against his parents that he can manage today.

“I’m sorry about last night,” he says quietly.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean… if my family or my friends had caught onto what was happening when I was a teen, I wouldn’t have run away, either. People have a way of getting their claws in you. It isn’t as easy as just knowing that life isn’t supposed to be this way and leaving.”

Connor looks up to him, watching him separate two socks beside his duffle bag, which is open and leaving a mess of unworn clothing across the floor and is haphazardly organized.

“How long did it take you?” Connor asks quietly. “You didn’t choose to leave your boyfriend because you recognized it was a bad relationship, you left because you didn’t want to be a secret.”

“Yeah. Well,” he sighs. “When I woke up he was dead and I had to move on. It was at some point, I think my fourth therapist, that said anything about it.”

“Were you resistant to it? The idea that it was wrong?”

“Of course. You don’t want to think your first great love is actually born from a teacher manipulating you.”

He didn’t know it was Gavin’s teacher. Just an adult. He doesn’t comment on it. He can’t. What happened to Gavin is completely different than what happened to Connor.

What is still happening.

“They’re all I have,” Connor says quietly, echoing Chloe from the night before.

He might’ve told Chloe last night that he was alone, but it’s not the same as this. It’s not the same as admitting that he’s only here with his family because of how truly alone he is. It’s the first time he’s said it out loud to anyone. The first time he has spoken words that even as he says them and can count a few people, it still rings true. He’s alone. Not because he doesn’t have anybody in his life. Markus is a good roommate. Hank is a good boss. Gavin is even, occasionally, a very good co-worker. But nobody knows about these things, so he is alone in this.

It doesn’t matter if Chloe and Gavin have witnessed his treatment over the weekend, they don’t know what it was like growing up here. 

Because Connor won’t tell them. He might never.

But if he loses his family, he will have nobody that is supposed to love him unconditionally.

“Sometimes being alone is better than being surrounded by people who will eat you alive,” Gavin whispers. “Anyway… I know you and your family aren’t supposed to give presents on Christmas because it’s like… an insult to their values or some shit, but… I did get you something.”

“You did?”

Gavin nods, pulling a wrapped present from underneath a pile of his clothes. Connor accepts it greedily, not for the present, but because it will shift the conversation away from what they’re talking about, and he doesn’t want to think about what Gavin said about being alone. Instead his hands and his eyes stick to the green wrapping paper, decorated with Christmas trees and mistletoe and snowmen.

“I didn’t get you anything,” Connor replies. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. My birthday is next week so I’ll expect double presents.”

“Your birthday is in October.”

“Fuck. Forgot you actually knew that.”

Connor smiles, hitting him lightly on the shoulder with the box before taking a step away from him, hiding his face as he pulls the edge of the paper up. His family has gifted him very few things, all of which he can count on one hand, all of which have come with a weighted consequence. Markus and Kara have both given him things, but they have all been of the utmost necessities. New socks or shoes, a mixed package of teas. Hank, who has given him the same thing every year on his birthday since he started at Sumo’s a few years back, has wrapped up soaps carved to look like dogs. Not using the silicon molds, but actually carved from scratch, smelling like strawberries or lemons.

This is different.

This is a hard-cover journal. Bound with a dark blue cloth with a white-inked stamp of a flock of birds, an elastic band keeping it shut, little ribbon bookmarks and a slot for a pen to cling to it.

“You seem like the kind of person with a lot of words inside of you,” Gavin says quietly. “I thought you needed a place to put them down. And it’s made out of recycled paper… so. I had the earth in mind, too.”

He thinks about the scraps of papers with half-formed lyrics. He thinks about the songs stuck inside of his head, dance routines, late night study sessions. He thinks about how often as a kid he would like awake, thinking for hours on end about everything and anything. He thinks about mornings where he has hated himself for ever feeling anything that strongly, that he must’ve been faking it or lying to himself. Manufacturing trauma and emotion to validate something that isn’t real.

He thinks about how this journal could contain all of that, prove to him that it’s real in the mornings when he’s so desperate to deny his suffering that he bends over backwards to forget it and brush it off.

Connor almost drops the book as he turns around, finding Gavin so much closer than he anticipated him and wrapping his arms around him tightly, burying his face against his shoulder, suffocating everything he’s feeling right now because he can’t break this early in the morning and it would certainly take him hours to jot everything down in the journal this second.

“Thank you,” he whispers. “I love it.”

When he pulls away, he sees this smile on Gavin’s face. So genuine and real. For Connor liking his gift? Maybe. It’s such a nice thing to see. Gavin happy. Connor could kiss him.

He could.

“Gavin…”

“Yeah?”

He swallows. Tries to swallow his fear and his anxiety. Overwhelmed with such a display of kindness from someone he never thought was very kind at heart. But Gavin was right last night. Connor shouldn’t think of Gavin as some heartless monster. And he didn’t. He doesn’t. He might’ve when Gavin first started working, but he’s had a crush on him for a while for a reason, and he likes to think he has a higher bar than someone with cheesy jokes that makes him laugh once in a while.

And, well--

Gavin’s appearance is something else, too.

“Connor?”

He shakes his head, tries to shake away the desire to kiss Gavin along with it. “Breakfast will be soon. We should go.”

“That all?”

Connor pulls away slowly, setting the journal on the edge of the bed. He feels Gavin’s hand on his, fingers intertwining with his, pulling him back away from it.

“Connor?” he whispers again. And he has a way of saying Connor’s name. So quiet, so tempting. Wrapped up with a thousand things that Connor wishes he could have. “Is that all you wanted?”

“No,” he murmurs, looking back to him. “No, it’s not.”

“You can…” Gavin trails off. “If you want. I wouldn’t mind. I… more than wouldn’t mind. If you did.”

How--

The fuck does Gavin always know?

He takes a step towards him, feels Gavin’s other hand on his waist, tugging him a little closer.

“It can be my gift,” Gavin says with a small smile. “Or you showing you gratitude.”

“I think it’s more than that, Gavin.”

“Good.”

_ Good. _

He lets out a shaky sigh, closing the small gap between them. He rests his head against Gavin’s, nudging his face gently, finding his lips with a soft kiss. One, then two, then the third all too consuming, with Gavin pulling him close.

And stupidly, Connor is thinking about two things--

One: it is past 7:15 in the morning now, so they’re late for breakfast.

Two: Gavin’s comment the night before about not packing condoms.

Not that it would be a good idea. Connor isn’t exactly stable right now, but leaning against Gavin and kissing him makes him feel so much better than focusing on going downstairs to see or talk to anyone.

Gavin pulls away, breathless and pulling Connor’s hands away from his sweater. Connor didn’t even realize he was trying to pull it off of him.

“Slow down,” he whispers. “Breakfast, remember?”

He nods.

Right.

Breakfast.

And as he pulls away and finds his new journal to pack away and make sure it doesn’t get found, he feels shame and humiliation creep in. Not at being rejected. He doesn’t care. Gavin is right and even if he wasn’t right, anybody reserves the ability to say no at any given time.

But he is thinking about how many times he grew up hearing his grandfather and his dad talking about how pathetic and horrible and awful of a thing it must be to like men. He is thinking about how Gavin is the first boy he’s kissed and he feels tears stinging in his eyes at doing something so revolting.

It’s not. Of course not. He knows that.

But apparently he doesn’t, because when Gavin touches his shoulder, he pulls away like he’s been burned.

  
  


At breakfast, his family has seemed to have forgotten the incident at dinner with Gavin the night before, because their focus is entirely on Chloe’s missing status at the meal and the staff failing to have his mother’s dress cleaned for today, though Connor knows they are likely scrambling right now to save the day.

It’s frustrating. Every year, Connor sees them trying their hardest to please his family despite the fact that his family has proved over and over again how little they care about Christmas beyond forcing them all to see each other and act as if nothing is wrong. The staff have families. They have families that want them home, not crying in the backroom because they dry-cleaned the wrong dress.

He knows he’s being selfish, he knows even the guilt that he felt the night before is coming right back up again, but he doesn’t say anything, even as his mother loudly announces that she’s thinking of firing the girl.

“Maybe Chloe can take up the position,” his father jokes.

Connor looks towards the other side of the table where Chloe usually sits, but the place is left emptied. He should’ve gone to see her this morning. He was too wrapped up in the journal, flipping through all those empty pages, imagining how quickly he could fill them up. After Gavin had left the room, he folded up the wrapping paper and tucked it inside of it and searched the floorboards for even a scrap that remained, terrified that someone might find it.

And now he is remembering Chloe at the piano, looking at the keys, playing that recording on her phone.

“Yes, and rightfully earn that money she snapped up from Niles. Can’t believe he fell for her tricks,” his mother scoffs. “Anybody with a mind can see right through her.”

“They loved each other,” Connor says quietly.

“Did you say something?”

He shakes his head, poking at the crepes with his fork. He can feel Gavin’s eyes on him and he hates it. He hates that this is exactly the way he has felt every year when he’s come to his parent’s with somebody. Telling him that it’s not okay to let other people be treated this way. And it isn’t. It’s not. But he has seen what his family does to people that stand up to them. There are scars on the backs of his hands. There are calluses on his feet. There are blood stained ballet shoes, sitting in his childhood bedroom.

_ Keep your mouth shut.  _ That is the first rule of this family. It is the only one he needs to follow if he wants to avoid any repercussions.

But Traci doesn’t deserve to be sitting in the backroom crying and Chloe doesn’t deserve to be treated like dirt. The money in this family is tainted with blood and the only person with a dime of it that deserves it is Chloe.

He feels a hand on his thigh, a thumb rubbing a gentle circle against his knee. He looks over to Gavin, who’s hand turns upwards open and waiting for Connor to take it. It isn’t until he does that he realizes how much his hands were shaking.

_ Too many words. _

Too many words and too much anxiety.

But he still speaks, even as his voice quivers and his stomach turns and he feels like he might faint right here and right now, “Actually, I said Niles would hate it if you treated his wife this way.”

“Niles isn’t here,” his mother says.

“And who’s fault is that?”

His mother narrows her gaze at him. And as if on cue, both her and his father turn their gaze to Gavin, like he’s the one to blame. He knows their brains are working at mach speed trying to find a way to pin it on him. Because he’s a boy, because he isn’t Kara, because he’s not well-kept, because he doesn’t shut up and stand by unless Connor has spent the morning pleading for him to.

“Niles died in a car accident, Connor, so you better watch your tongue before you start finding someone to blame when we all know which child we would rather have at our table right now.”

Gavin’s hand squeezes his and he leans over, voice lowered, “We should go.”

He nods, but he can’t move. He doesn’t think he can get up. His legs are jelly. He is not fueled by rage when people treat him this way. Not like Gavin is. He is not the type to storm off. He is the type to endure whatever cruelty is thrown at him. Internalize it until it breaks him down to his very core.

Yes, Gavin was right. He does have too many words inside of him with no place to go, but in situations like this, all he can have is what his parents have said on repeat.

_ You aren’t playing the song quick enough. Someone at your skill level should have already mastered this song! They should be able to play it with their eyes closed. Why can’t you do better? Why can’t you just memorize the beats, the rhythm? Why are you so horrible at doing the bare minimum? _

_ It’s an easy dance, I don’t understand what your problem is. You always get caught up on the simplest of steps. And soften your face. You look like you’re in pain, and nobody cares if you’re in pain. This is a happy song and you need to keep control of your expression. _

_ Why can’t you do this? _

_ Why can’t you do anything at all? _

_ You’re just a stupid boy. We had such high hopes for you. _

_ You could be so much better if you actually put any effort in. _

_ Why don’t you ever try? _

_ Why don’t you try, like your brother? _

_ Why don’t you sing like him? He has the voice of an angel. Why can’t you get grades like his? _

_ Why are you alive and he isn’t? _

_ Nobody is ever going to love you like this. _

“Look. He’s crying,” his grandfather says. “Well done.”

It’s said like such a joke. Like it’s hilarious. Gavin is pulling him away from the chair and he feels his feet stumble, his vision blurry and gone. He isn’t crying. He hasn’t actually shed a tear until Gavin has forced him out of the room and to the safety of the hallway, but they could still see it. His face twisted up in pain, in knowing they were right.

They would rather Niles be here.

Everyone would.

If Gavin met Niles, Connor bets he would love him in an instant. Everyone always did. He’s the one that had a wife, too, and if anything else, Chloe deserves to have her husband. He was the perfect one. He was the one that they managed to execute properly. 

Like he’s some kind of doll and Connor is just the prototype son.

“Connor?” Gavin whispers. “Hey, Con—”

“I’d like to be alone,” he replies. “Please.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

He doesn’t care what Gavin thinks, he is pushing him away regardless and walking quickly. His head is floating somewhere up above him, completely detached from his feet as they move numbly throughout the house. Gavin is following him, and Connor knows he won’t stop unless Connor screams at him or yells at him or pushes him away but he won’t.

He won’t because he’s an idiot. Because he is weak and stupid and foolish and he is willing to expose himself as an idiot that will cry and weep until he is empty of everything and anything before he can shove away the person that helped him escape. That didn’t laugh when he saw tears, that held his hand, that told him he could run.

They could run.

They could get away from here.

Connor won’t. He knows that even as he pushes the door to the library open, as he falls to the floor in front of one of the bookshelves, his lungs heaving for air and expelling tears. The sobs are destroying him, surely. The intake of oxygen is fracturing his ribs, the tears will drown him. His head is going to split open and he’s going to lay bleeding on the floor and there will never be any hope of saving him.

And who the fuck cares anymore?

Niles is the one that should be here.

Niles should be the one that is alive, not Connor. Never Connor. What a fucking horrible thing the world has done, taking Niles away and leaving Connor behind. Kara broke up with him before Niles’ death and if he died, nobody would have even noticed that he slipped away from the world. Nobody would’ve planned the extravagant funeral and played memorial tapes of a wedding. There would be no grieving wife, no tears shed from his mother and his aunt.

“It’s a-all my fault,” he whispers, his hands pressed against his chest, begging his heart to slow down, for his lungs to take a break, but he can’t make them stop. He can’t make anything stop, it just keeps going and going and going. Everything is running ahead without him and he has tried his hardest to catch up but  _ why? _

Why does he try?

Why is he begging his life to hold on and wait for him to make himself worthy of living?

“What’s your fault?” Gavin says, hands clinging onto his. One of them on his cheeks, doing a terrible job at keeping up with wiping the tears away. They are too heavy, too often.

“Niles,” he says. “He’s d-dead because of me. He’s dead—”

“Connor, you can’t—”

“I can,” he says. “I can blame myself. I’m allowed to do that. It’s my f-fault. I didn’t… I didn’t try hard enough, I’ve never tried hard enough. If I tried harder, it would’ve been me that got accepted to that school. I would’ve been the one in the p-program I would’ve—”

“Slow down,” Gavin whispers. “Just breathe, okay?”

“N-No!” he says, pushing Gavin’s hands away. “No. I can’t. I don’t get to stop. I don’t get to slow down. My brother’s dead.”

If Connor was there, if he hadn’t run away from his family in shame from being rejected from the only options his parents cared about, he would’ve been with Niles. He would’ve seen the signs. He would’ve noticed the stress getting to him. The same late nights. The pills to focus. The drinking to ease pain. He would’ve been there and he could’ve stopped it. And even if he couldn’t have, even if he ran away, he didn’t have to run from Niles.

He didn’t have to fucking abandon his brother to this family.

The last Christmas they had together, all they did was sit in silence. They didn’t even fight. They didn’t talk and they barely looked at each other.

That was his last memory of his brother. An awkward hello and a wave goodbye because Connor didn’t want to walk back up to the house to say anything to him.

That’s how he remembers Niles. Tired and weary and waving from the porch without even a forced smile between them.

This family—

Connor knew it chewed people up and spat them out and all he did was save himself.

How is he supposed to live with that?

_ How is he supposed to live with himself? _

“Connor,” Gavin whispers again, when his hysterics have started to die down into the same question repeated over and over again in his head. “This is not your fault. Your brother dying is not your fault. Your parents cruelty is not your fault.”

“You heard them,” Connor whispers. “They wish I was dead.”

“But I don’t,” he says. “And Chloe doesn’t. Hank doesn’t. Markus, your roommate, right? He doesn’t.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I know. They’re your parents. You want them to love you, but Connor, I’m sorry—” he says. “They don’t. They don’t love you and I know that hurts, but it isn’t your fault. There’s nothing you could do to make your family love you. That isn’t on you. That’s on them.”

“It’s all I ever wanted, Gavin,” he whispers. “I just wanted them… I wanted them to be proud of me for once.”

“I know. And I can’t replace them, but you aren’t alone, and I am proud of you. I’m proud of you when I see how you’ve gotten good at soap making, you know? You’re the best employee at Sumo’s—”

“Shut up,” Connor whispers. “Stop.”

“No. You are. Hank makes good designs, but you know we’d be nothing without you. I’m not joking, Connor. You always know what fragrances to pick. You always know which ones discolor and which ones accelerate. You know the best blends to do. You know exactly what themes to pick each month. You always know which soaps we should stock up on in advance.”

It’s not funny.

It’s so stupid, but it isn’t funny. That Gavin would see some value in him for the job he’s paid to do, but he’s never heard anybody say that before. That he’s good at what he does. He just does it, in silence, working continuously.

“Is that all I’m good for?” Connor whispers. “A few soaps?”

“God, no,” Gavin replies with a laugh. “You’re so incredibly kind and funny. You’re the funniest person I’ve ever met. You laugh at my stupid jokes too, so you’re really good at stroking my ego. You make me wish I was a better person just so I could have half a chance at a shot with you.”

“Half a chance at a shot?”

“Shut up,” Gavin says. “Whatever they want you to be, they’re wrong. They’re wrong for thinking you aren’t enough on your own already. They’re wrong for thinking you are only worthy of love if you play the piano and you sing.”

“And ballet.”

“Ballet?” Gavin smiles softly. “Never seen you dance before.”

“And you never will.”

Gavin’s hand is on his cheek, dragging away the last tear. “Okay. I won’t. You don’t need to, okay? You don’t need to be anything but alive to be worth being alive. Fuck them and their stupid assumptions. You aren’t stupid and you aren’t broken and if I have to help you learn that, I will.”

Connor reaches up, pulling Gavin’s hand away from his cheek, he holds onto it tightly, presses a kiss against his knuckles.

A few words is not going to make this go away.

A few words can’t make anything go away.

“What time is it?” Connor asks quietly.

Gavin’s face shifts into confusion, but he leans back, pulling his phone from his pocket, “Little before eight, why?”

Connor lets go of him, getting up to his feet, “I have to find Chloe.”

  
  


It’s strange walking to this part of the house. The opposite direction on the second floor as his bedroom is. Him and his brother were separated completely, as though his parents were intent of severing the tie they had with each other.

Being here is like being a kid again, running across the floorboards, chasing his brother with a stick that they picked out from the forest to be swords. Such a long time ago, he can’t even remember how they managed it without getting yelled at. Maybe his father was working. Maybe the staff at the time were trying to protect whatever child innocence they had.

Connor knocks on the door, trying to prepare himself for whatever lies on the other side, but no amount of steeling himself changes anything when the door opens and Chloe is on the other side, framed with a blanket that Connor doesn’t recognize, but a sweater that he does, because he’s wearing the matching one.

Niles’ room looks the same as his, though. White walls, white floors, white furniture. Everything toned down to the smallest possible version. If the children in this house are not allowed to take up space, neither can their things.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hi,” she replies. “Where’s Gavin?”

“In our room.”

“I see,” Chloe says. “Are you here to tell it’s time to start dinner, because I don’t plan on going down there.”

She’s different now than she was last night when he saw her. Not upset and sad, but furious. Filled with an anger that radiates off of her like a heatwave.

“Chloe—”

“Last night, do you know what they said to me after you left?” she asks. “They told me that it was a shame you were…”

“What?”

“I don’t really want to repeat the word,” she says, turning away from him. “Not my place to say those kinds of things, though that didn’t stop them.”

_ Oh. _

“Chloe—”

“They hate me,” she says. “For marrying him. For loving him. Well, nevermind, they’d have to believe I actually loved him to hate me for that. But you know what they hate about me more than all of that? For not having a kid before he died. Like I knew he was going to and should’ve made it my priority to pop out a child rather than save his life.”

“That’s not your fault.”

“No,” she says. “It’s not! Because we tried. We were going to go to the doctors, even. Just another failure to them. I made sure Niles didn’t say a word about it to them, but I’m sure they’ll find out eventually. Hate me for it for the rest of their lives.”

“They’d hate you anyway.”

She nods, “Yeah. They would. So why do we try so hard, Connor?”

“Chloe,” Connor says again, reaching for her hand, pulling her to a stop from her pacing around the room. “I wanted to tell you I’m sorry.”

“You already did last night--”

“No,” he whispers. “I want to give you a better one this time. One that means something. No excuses for you. I’m sorry Niles died. I’m sorry my family treats you the way they do. I’m sorry I didn’t stick up for you. I should’ve. No matter what the repercussions were. I know how much it hurts and I didn’t say anything because I was scared it would come back on me, but I shouldn’t have been so weak.”

“Niles should’ve, too.”

Connor wants to reject this. Say that Niles did, but he didn’t. He held back just like Connor did. But he tried harder in his own way, by being as perfect as he could, so maybe his dazzling talents could distract from the lack of perfection performed by his spouse, which is such bullshit, because none of them should’ve needed to be perfect regardless.

“Thanks,” she says finally. “Doesn’t change anything, though, does it? He’s still dead. Your family is still…”

“Yeah,” he says. “I know. But… you said you wanted to run away, right?”

“Hypothetically.”

“Hypothetically, I think we should.”

“Connor, come on—”

“We can’t do anything to stop them from being horrible people, Chloe. Niles proved that. He died trying to be exactly what they wanted and it didn’t do anything. They didn’t change. They didn’t see anything wrong with what they were doing, just that we were wrong for not also killing ourselves trying to achieve the same thing,” he says. “All we will ever get from them is anger and hatred.”

“So we run away?”

“It’s Christmas,” Connor says quietly. “Why are we spending it with people that we will only ever disappoint?”

“Are you serious?” Chloe asks. “Actually… serious?”

“Gavin’s packing our stuff. We’re going to leave. I’m not coming back here. I want you to come with us.”

Chloe turns around, looking at the room. The complete lack of Niles’ embedded in the walls and the furniture. None of him remains here. Not even a ghost. Nothing at all. His parents only have a few photographs of them littered around the house. This place is cold and empty. There is no room for life here.

“They’re all I have left of him,” she says quietly.

“I know,” he replies, taking her hand, squeezing it once. “But you have so much more of him in you than they have put together.”

She looks back to him, smiling softly. A pained expression that Connor has seen on her face a hundred times this visit. The same pained smile that she wears whenever she is around his family. She didn’t even look happy on her wedding day, not with his mother and Amanda behind her shoulders, telling her that her dress had too plunging of a neckline, that her hair was done all wrong, that the ring on her finger certainly showed that Niles wasn’t serious enough about her if he got her such a small diamond.

Like any of those things should’ve mattered other than marrying somebody she loved.

If Connor could take it back, if he could’ve given her a day full of happiness—

He’d do anything.

But he can’t.

He can only do this.

“Come with us, Chloe, please,” he whispers.

And he realizes, he doesn’t know if he would leave without her. He doesn’t know if he could, in good conscience, run away from his family while leaving Chloe behind defenseless. He would keep coming back to this family just to protect her from them.

It’s the same reason he brought Gavin with, too. Some sort of defense. Not to deflect insults to, just to lean on.

And he should’ve done so much more than this so much sooner.

“Okay,” she says. “Give me ten minutes.”

  
  


Chloe took a taxi to get here, which Connor counts as lucky so they don’t have to worry about a second car, but their trunk fills up fast with their bags, and despite their attempt to remain silent in their escape, he can hear his mother shouting at him that he’s ruining Christmas. He decides not to say anything, to pass the keys to Gavin’s hands because he doesn’t know if he has much more strength in him after this.

But as the doors slam closed and the shouts are muffled, as the heater kicks on in the car and tries it’s hardest to start and erase the chill trapped in here, as Chloe’s hand reaches up between the seats and clings to Connor’s and the house turns into a blur behind them on the road—

He knows that of all his hard work, of singing until he lost his voice, of playing piano until his fingers and his wrists ached, dancing until his shoes were worn through and his feet bled and screamed for a break—

This is the best choice he could’ve ever made with his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's been a hot minute. i'm sorry orz busy with a few other things.


	5. look at me, i exist

Gavin drives for what feels like forever. The endless stretch of white broken up by bare trees, snow-covered buildings, and other cars zipping by on the highway. Their silence comes and goes in waves, stretched out as songs play on the radio that sometimes they all sing along to together, sometimes resigning themselves to quiet as Chloe hums in the backseat. Sometimes they play games, passing the time with I Spy, 20 Questions, and competing to find the alphabet in various road signs and billboards. Gavin is the best at I Spy and guessing the answer at 20 Questions, but Chloe is the best at finding questions to begin with. None of them are quite as good as Connor at the alphabet game, which Gavin blames on the fact that he’s the one driving and Chloe says it’s because he has a better seat, but even when they stop at a gas station for snacks and drinks and Chloe and Connor trade places, he still wins.

They don’t stop driving until they reach the coast. Gavin parks in the empty lot and the three of them climb out, boots crunching on the snow down the untouched pathway towards the shore. From snow to sand, wind whips around them, gaining speed. Chloe loses her hat and she chases after it with Gavin, the two of them tripping over the sand as they laugh until they catch it. Connor walks ahead towards the water’s edge, his feet just at the line of where the water has washed up on shore with its shallow waves and icy surface. Not quite solid, but small chunks of ice lay broken up on the surface.

He’s never been anywhere on Christmas other than with his family, save last year when he was too terrified to face a family without a girlfriend and without a brother. It’s strange to be here, with Chloe and Gavin. Hearing them laugh behind him. It is such a strange thing to hear people laugh so genuinely on Christmas. So freeing in a way that he never thought he could ever feel.

Connor stretches his arms out from his sides, the wind blowing strong, messing up his hair, freezing his face and his fingertips. It is like a cleansing, all that wind blowing away all the weight on his shoulders. He feels so free and open. Such a different feeling than when he’d stand on his rooftops, arms out to his side, wondering how long it would take before he hit the ground. If maybe he would shock the world, sprout wings, and take off.

This is not one of those heavy nights where things feel hopeless, where the world feels empty without his brother.

He hears the laughing and the voices behind him and for the first time in his entire life—

Oh, it feels like possibility is sitting just within reach.

  
  


The water is too cold to get in, but they sit on the sand, frozen to the bone, leaning against each other, watching the water lap up on shore. Chloe leans against his shoulder and he leans against Gavin’s, feeling a hand on his side, up underneath his jacket, holding him close. They stay there as they turn numb and cold and shivering. They stay until it starts to snow and Gavin pulls them from the ground, the trio making their way back up the slope towards the parking lot.

They leave behind a Christmas tree crafted from their numb hands and ice-cold sand to build a snowman— _ half  _ a snowman— up by the parking lot when Gavin interrupts them with a snowball to the back of Connor’s head. Chloe takes revenge for him before they spiral out into a full-blown war. Connor and Chloe start it with a truce, both trying to take down Gavin who clearly has an upper hand with using the car as a shield, but Chloe turns on him and Connor ends the match in last place, laying on his back and staring at the stretch of white sky above him. He hears the two laughing, continuing their war, before it goes quiet. He thinks about getting up, spying on the two to see who’s won, but before he can, Gavin flops down beside him, poking at his nose.

“Hey.”

“Hi,” he replies. “Where’s Chloe?”

“She got a phone call. She forfeited to take it,” Gavin says. “I wanted to talk to you alone anyway.”

“For why?”

“To see how you are. It’s only been a few hours. 

“Are you asking me if I regret my choice?”

“No,” Gavin says quietly, then considers the question. “A little.”

“I don’t. I’m… happy. Bittersweet kind of happy, though. I don’t really know why.”

“It’s okay to be confused.”

“You’re so nice to me,” Connor whispers. “You’ve never been this nice to me. I hope it’s not because you feel sorry for me.”

“No. I told you. I’m not as much of a monster as you think I am,” Gavin says with a small smile. It fades a few seconds later with a shake of his head, “Tired of pretending, I guess.”

“Pretending at what? Hating me?”

“Not so much hating you,” he says. “Just not liking you.”

“You should be kind to people more often, not just because you like them.”

“I know. I’m working on it. Why do you think I’m being nice to Chloe?”

“You don’t like her?”

“That’s now what I meant—”

Connor smiles, reaching up to grab Gavin’s scarf, tugging on the fringe at the end. “I’m teasing you.”

“I know you are. I don’t appreciate it.”

“Then why are you smiling so much?”

“’Cause I like this.”

“Me teasing you? But you just—”

“I mean you acting like you again,” Gavin whispers. “Instead of… the way you do around your parents. It’s good to see you smile.”

He feels his stomach drop. Some kind of terrified feeling rock through him at the thought that he’s that different around his family. He knew already, but enough for Gavin to comment on it?

No wonder he spent the entirety of their time there trying to drag Connor out.

“Sorry,” he says quietly. “For acting strange, then.”

“Not your fault. No need to apologize. You didn’t do anything wrong,” he says. “Well, you did do  _ one  _ thing wrong.”

“And what’s that?”

“I’ve watched a lot of cheesy romcoms with my sister, you know—”

“I know. You told me.”

“And I told you how they end.”

“By being in love.”

“Yes,” he says quietly.

He is staring at Connor’s face. Not like he’s waiting for an answer, but searching for something to say.

“Did you fall in love with me?” Connor asks. “Or am I the only one in the wrong, here?”

“Connor…” he looks away, down at Connor’s hand still holding onto his scarf. “I was already on the way to it for a long time coming, Con.”

_ Oh. _

“How--How long?”

“A few months. Six. Maybe seven.”

_ More than a few. _

“You never asked me out.”

“I didn’t think you’d say yes.”

“Is that why you agreed to come with me?” Connor asks. “Because you’re in love with me?”

“Yeah. Well... it was a bad move on my part. And I don’t know if I’m in love with you. I mean I like you. A lot. I’m really close to loving you, I think. But--”

“But you thought maybe I’d fall in love with you?”

“God, Con, I wasn’t… I didn’t say yes to manipulate you or anything. I just thought it would be good to spend some time with you. And if you… if you thought about me in that way, then maybe we could, I don’t know--”

“Gavin?”

“Yeah?”

“I like you.”

“I thought so. Because of the kiss. Not because I’m, like, obsessed or vain or something. But the way--”

“Gavin,” he says again, tugging on the scarf, pulling Gavin closer. “Calm down.”

“Okay. Sorry,” he says. “It’s just I told you that I love you--might love you--and you’re taking it very cooly. It’s making me nervous.”

And it’s cute to see Gavin nervous. To spill out hundreds of words. To try his best to fill the gap. Not letting Connor say anything so he can’t say no.

But he doesn’t want to say no.

“Can you give me time?” Connor asks. “To right my wrong?”

“You want to go out?”

Connor nods, “I just need it to be… slow. Really slow.”

Slow because he’s scared about what happened this morning after they kissed. Slow because he has left all his family behind. Slow because when he thinks about a future with somebody and the inability to introduce that somebody to his brother, he feels a little broken.

“Okay. I can do that. I don’t mind moving slow, Connor. Not even a little bit. I like slow. Slow is preferrable.”

“Then it’s a deal.”

“Yeah. It’s a deal.”

  
  


They climb into the car with chattering teeth, Gavin in the backseat pressed between them to put his hands against the heat vents. They stay there in silence, letting the car get warm, letting the frozen feelings in their chests thaw out again.

“I don’t want to go home yet,” Connor says.

“Then don’t,” Gavin replies. “We’ll go somewhere else.”

“I have a flight to catch in the morning,” Chloe says. “As long as you get me to the airport, I don’t care where we go.”

“Then let’s just drive,” he says. “Keep going.”

  
  


So they do.

They drive until they reach the only store they find open, Chloe apologizing profusely to the worker who’s spending her Christmas day scanning cookie dough and hot chocolate packets instead of with whoever would make today feel like the holiday it is. Chloe rents them a cabin a few miles north to spend the night, but even with the map and the detailed instructions given to them by the employee behind the desk, they get lost on the road that twists and turns out from trees. They pass by cabins after cabins, none of which list the number 800 on the front. When they finally take the right turn onto the right road and reach their way, Gavin and Chloe have stopped arguing about which one of them can’t understand directions and started arguing about whether or not Gavin’s comment of  _ you remind me of my sister  _ is a compliment or an insult.

The cabin itself is an impressive thing of old wood and vast rooms. While the kitchen is updated, the fireplace remains old, with a stack of chopped logs and directions screwed into the brick above it with a hundred warnings and precautions that Gavin doesn’t read before he starts piling the wood up inside of it.

Chloe takes the room across the hall from Connor and Gavin, which reminds him that the two are still supposed to be pretending that they’re together. He’d forgotten, honestly. Everything has felt so easy today until Chloe brings Gavin’s bag in and drops it on the floor beside his. The bed here is smaller than the one he has at his childhood home, no room for a sofa against the wall like he has in his room, either.

Though, if he really wanted, he could just tell Chloe the truth. She wouldn’t care. But he doesn’t want to. Doesn’t want to admit that him and Gavin aren’t together. Doesn’t want to imply that Gavin means nothing to him, when he doesn’t.

Gavin wasn’t the reason he left home—

He was just part of it. He was the final push. The person to catch him when he falls. Not  _ if.  _ When. He will fall. Maybe not now. Maybe not for a while. But he will.

Connor slips the journal out from his bag, curling up on the bed with the pen he bought at the store. A chunky red and white striped thing with a snowman at the top. If he twists the hat and pulls the carrot nose down, he can switch between any color of ink in the rainbow, though he opts for black. And he writes.

He writes something small, something good.

He writes about today, just the good parts. None of the bad.

He has plenty of time to write about the bad, but he doesn’t want to forget this and he’s afraid if he waits much longer, the good will slip away and all he will be left with is the bad. He needs something to remind him that something positive happened today.

  
  


They bought cheesy Christmas sweaters at the shop. The kind with pompoms sewn on to create a 3-D nose on a reindeer and buttons on Santa’s clothes. Gavin has a pair of antlers on, too, and he’s coming towards Connor with a Santa hat and a candy cane stuck in his mouth.

“You need this,” Gavin says around the candy. “Chloe said so.”

“You’re going to choke if you talk with food in your mouth.”

“You wish,” Gavin says, pulling the hat onto Connor’s head, yanking it down until it rests snuggly over his eyes and obscures half his vision. “Years of smoking taught me how to talk with something in my mouth.”

“Oh, it was smoking that did that?”

“Shut up,” he says, hitting him lightly on the shoulder. “Chloe wants to make cookies and I found a DVD collection of shitty Hallmark Christmas movies, so get ready for a very fun, very cringey movie marathon.”

“Sounds fun.”

“It will be,” Gavin says. “And what else would be fun is if you maybe sat next to me and made fun of the stupid shit people do.”

“I’m not the type to mock even fictional characters, Gavin.”

“I can teach,” he says. “Or not. That wasn’t really the important part of my question.”

“I thought it was a given that I’d sit next to you, though,” Connor says. “Since you’re my fake boyfriend and all.”

“And someday real boyfriend?”

“Yes,” Connor says. He reaches out, taking Gavin’s hand lightly. Warm and rough against his own palm. “I look forward to it.”

“Yeah?” Gavin says. He smiles. That stupid sweet smile of his. The one that makes it look like he’s in on some strange joke. “Is it okay if I kiss you then?”

Connor nods. Waits.

Gavin leans up, presses a soft kiss against Connor’s lips. It’s not like before. It’s over in a second. No pressing for more, no pushing for things that Connor didn’t realize how much he wanted. It’s a relief in the sense that when Gavin pulls away and offers that stupid smile up again that he doesn’t feel sick to his stomach.

It’s not always going to be like this. Connor knows that. Two kisses isn’t going to erase a lifetime of hearing his parents tell him that liking men is wrong.

But he likes this.

They make cookies together. The kind that have pictures printed on them. Christmas trees and Santa faces. Chloe swats Gavin’s hands away from the raw dough, but he manages a few pieces anyway, eating them in the corner like he’s doing it secretly while Chloe murmurs under her breath that he’s going to get sick, as if she’s doing it secretly, too. Connor keeps finding himself back to silence. Some part of himself lost in how to continue all this.

He didn’t realize how empty of a person he was until today. He always knew he was missing something. Not a soul, but maybe a personality. He never had a chance to have anything. He spent his days practicing or studying. He never had friends. Meeting Kara was an accident. Dating her was an expectation. Falling in love with her wasn’t. Being with her was easy, too. She traveled often and he was always a better listener than a talker, so he would listen to her stories and tell her little in return.

It really is quite a wonder how they lasted more than a few weeks, sometimes.

Sometimes, though, it isn’t.

Connor is the person that people forget. He is the person that people push aside. They don’t mean to lose him. It’s like losing track of time. He just slips through the cracks. She wasn’t like that, though. She could never slip through the cracks of his life. Her breaking up with him wasn’t a shock, but the way she did it was. Telling him that they needed to be honest with themselves—that it hadn’t been working for a long time. That this was for the best. So they could move on and find people that they could love. It was the way she said it—like she wasn’t in love with him.

He thinks she probably never was.

He thinks she loved him, but wasn’t  _ in  _ love with him. Just a filler in her life.

Yes—

It was for quite some time.

But their relationship, in retrospect, was so hollow.

And he gets it now.

He wasn’t really a person during those years. He just existed. Filling in time. Waiting for the end. He could still do that. Oh, easily Connor could do that. He is incredible at filling time. Wasting it away. Spending it like it is burning a hole in his pocket. He can tick off seconds and minutes and hours just by thinking about his past. He can destroy days, weeks, years, just by doing what is expected of him.

Ten years blinked by after he left his family. He can blink by another and another. He can keep going until he is laying in a bed alone and dying with nobody to hold his hand and help prepare him for what happens next. He can do that.

He just doesn’t want to.

He has spent his entire life doing these things and he is desperate to have something more. Back in the beginning of his relationship with Kara, when she looked at him with something that felt like possibility.

He has all the time in the world to waste—

Why not waste it finding himself for once?

  
  


They steal cookies that are too warm from the tray and they fall apart in their hands. Chloe reads out information printed on a laminated sheet that details activities and things in the area. Things they could do if it wasn’t Christmas and they were here for more than a night. But they do discover a few things they can do otherwise. They make a new (better) snowman in the backyard of the cabin. Chloe makes a snow angel, which Gavin tramples through accidentally and tries his hardest to fix. Sleds sitting in a shed outback that they take with them when they hike up the hills to find a place to go down. Gavin crashes against a tree and gives himself a split lip that Connor deems not bad enough to need stitches. 

When they come back, they crowd around the fireplace with their mugs of hot chocolate and pass around cheap trinkets bought from the store. A plastic necklace with a light up elf face for Chloe, a penguin mug for Gavin, and a chance of a future not riddled with worries for Connor.

They watch their twenty-five (though they only make it through three) of their Hallmark movies. Gavin falls asleep slumped against the couch during the second one, followed close behind by Chloe, curled up in Niles’ sweater and that blanket he doesn’t recognize. Connor falls asleep during the third one, purposefully, crawling close against Gavin as he can, hiding his face against the back of his shirt, cloaked in the scent of peppermint.

His first good Christmas comes to a close as he clings onto Gavin, finally understanding that excitement in childrens’ eyes when the first snow comes, understanding the obsession behind snowman soaps and candy canes.

And what a beautiful thing that is, he thinks, to be happy without faking it.


End file.
